Pisa Travel Story: Beyond the Leaning Tower

Pisa is one of those places almost everyone has heard of, or at least seen in a film—although I still do not entirely understand why it became quite so famous 🙂 Especially when Europe has so many other leaning towers. My own first encounter with it came through Superman III. Those who have seen the film will remember that Superman turns bad and, simply to cause trouble, straightens the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What a wonderfully innocent idea of villainy 🙂

After Pisa grew wealthy through trade, the city wanted to rival Genoa and Venice. It built the cathedral and baptistery here, then added the tower as the cathedral’s bell tower—but karma had other plans and the project did not go quite as intended. The building history is complex and the identity of the original architect has long been debated, although Bonanno Pisano is now commonly associated with the first phase. The tower, cathedral, baptistery and cemetery form the Piazza del Duomo UNESCO World Heritage Site. Universities, engineers and conservation bodies have studied and restored the tower repeatedly. A major stabilisation project ran from 1990 to 2001, reducing the lean and allowing the monument to reopen. Continuing monitoring has found the tower stable and in better structural condition than once predicted; earlier estimates suggested the intervention could protect it for centuries. So if you have not visited yet, there is no need to panic—you should still have time.

Unless you are studying art history, you may take the obligatory pushing-and-pulling photographs and then realise that only half an hour has passed. Do not panic. Slip quietly into the street opposite the tower and walk for about a hundred metres; before long, you will find yourself among local residents. That is exactly what we did. We bought an ice-cream cone from a gelateria on that street and wandered into an antiques market. The prices seemed designed for tourists, so we did not buy anything but it was lovely to browse. Afterwards we sat in a nearby park and immediately posted our photographs of ourselves ‘holding up’ the tower.
A note for students: during our visit, the park had a fast eduroam connection. Eduroam is the international roaming Wi-Fi service used by participating education and research institutions. Coverage changes, so do not rely on this old observation without checking.

If the baptistery and tower have only intensified your appetite for art history, the Sinopie Museum is nearby. Its story is fascinating. The museum occupies a 13th-century former pilgrims’ hospital. After the Camposanto was badly damaged by fire following bombardment in 1944, conservators detached surviving frescoes and discovered the preparatory drawings beneath them. These drawings are called sinopie. The name comes from sinoper or sinopia, the red pigment traditionally used for the first drawing on plaster and historically associated with Sinope—modern Sinop in Turkey. The original article incorrectly described the works as frescoes discovered on the hospital walls and attributed the pigment to fine sand from both Sinop and Cappadocia. The museum is not a ‘Sinop museum’; it houses the preparatory drawings from the Camposanto frescoes. Visitor information checked against the official museum description in August 2026.

If you would rather stop walking and have a coffee, Bar Duomo opposite the tower offers an excellent view. We cannot vouch for the service, but watching people pose for photographs could keep you entertained for hours.

We ended our short visit at Pisa Airport, from where we were flying back to our temporary home in Ciudad Real. We jumped into a taxi; the fare we paid at the time was only €11, but that historical price should not be used for present-day planning. Check the meter rules, official tariffs and airport transport options before travelling.
Our taxi also charged an extra 50 cents for luggage. That was our experience on the day, not a current universal rule; verify any supplements before starting the journey.

Happy travels 🙂