Pisa Express

Pisa Express While visiting Florence, I took the opportunity one day to make the short train journey to Pisa for the obvious reason. Apart from the tower I knew nothing about Pisa, I hadn’t even bothered to consult my travel guide to see what else, if anything, was there. As far as I was concerned, Pisa owed it’s existence entirely to its tower and would otherwise be totally inconsequential. Indeed, had the tower not leaned, it would still be inconsequential; after all there must be plenty of towns in Italy with towers that no-one’s ever heard of. I began to gather during the journey that, in all likelihood, Pisa shared the river Arno with Florence, as we seemed to be trailing it all the way. I’m afraid I don’t have much time for the Arno, especially in Florence. I usually love rivers that run through cities, they normally enhance them and help to divide them into useful chunks and provide lovely views from their bridges. The Arno in Florence does none of these things; it’s far too small and it looks like a dirty canal with not enough water in it. The only benefit reaped from it is the Ponte Vecchio, and the Florentines had the good sense to put houses on it so that you can’t actually see the river from the bridge – a wise move. I then began to wonder which direction Pisa lay in relation to Florence, up river or down river. I tried to see whether the Arno looked fatter or thinner, sometimes an indication, but it just seemed to be hanging grimly on to its impression of a dirty canal with not enough water in it. It was still early enough in the day for the sun to be more east than anything else, so I gathered from this in a very boy-scoutish way that we were heading west. We were heading towards the Mediterranean! Was Pisa on the coast? Did it have a beach as well as a tower? Would I be able to claim that I’d had a paddle in Pisa? I stared hard at the approaching horizon to see if any glimpses of sea could be discerned. One of the peculiar truths about travelling by train is that whatever you are going to see is always on the other side of the town from the station you’ve chosen to arrive at. In Pisa’s case you’d have thought that they’d have put the station a little nearer to the tower. Perhaps it’s some sort of global agreement with taxi drivers. I went to Dunfermline once which, to my surprise, had two stations. I chose the one furthest from my hotel and had to get a taxi. In this case, however, it was a nice day, not too hot, so a walk was not such a bad prospect. I’d still had no sight of the Mediterranean, so my initial excitement had waned and I’d temporarily suspended my curiosity about whether Italian children play with buckets and spades. What was worrying me more was that I’d had no sight of the tower. I felt sure that as we approached the town it would be plainly visible in all its glory, if not for miles, at least for a kilometre or two. Surely, of all days, this wasn’t the one when it had taken its final lean and toppled over. I could already envisage the locals hacking and selling off lumps of their own walls as souvenir pieces. As I set off from the station, having purchased a little map and found the station on it, I headed towards the little picture of the tower which seemed to be situated in something called the Campo dei Miracoli. The Field of Miracles, this sounded promising. But first I could see I was going to have another encounter with the Arno. Would it be kinder to Pisa than it was to Florence? It was, marginally, it’s a bit wider and the buildings are set further back from the banks to give it more of a chance, but try as I might I could still only see a dirty canal with not enough water in it.

Having crossed the bridge, the map directed me down a long and pleasant residential street which still revealed nothing of the tower or indeed any miracles, let alone a field full. Then finally, after about half a mile, I turned the corner and there it was in all its glory, gleaming whitish in the sun and leaning for all it was worth , apparently straight towards me. I couldn’t fail to notice that it was accompanied by two other structures, a relatively smallish Duomo, and something further down which resembled the dome of the Florence Duomo, but without a cathedral beneath it, which turned out to be a baptistry. To my horror, as I walked further round the piazza, I noticed that the tower was being held up by several large cables. No-one had ever mentioned this before, I always assumed that the tower leant of its own accord, not with assistance from the local fire brigade. Had I done my homework of course, I would have known that work was going on to arrest and slightly reverse the lean to prevent the tower from toppling. They weren’t going to cure it altogether and make it upright again though, as it presumably once had been. I suppose they’d decided that ‘the upright tower of Pisa’ didn’t have quite the same ring about it and would probably upset the large number of souvenir sellers who would be left with a frightening amount of redundant miniatures. Most disappointingly this meant that I would not be able to go up the tower and conduct my own gravity experiment as Galileo had done, dropping his objects of differing weights from the top to see how fast they fell. I know I could have done this anywhere of course, but it’s somehow not the same hanging out of your own bedroom window, and as far as I knew Galileo had never been to Hertfordshire. I therefore had to content myself with wandering round the Field of Miracles (and a Couple of Cables) trying to take photos from angles which hid the cables. I gave up in the end, deciding that this was part of the tower’s history after all so I might as well make the most of it. For all I knew, when they detached the cables the tower might well fall down and I would have some of the last photos of it, so I went round and took some shots with the cables prominently in the foreground, just in case. I then went into the Duomo, just a matter of yards away, to see what it had to offer. I have to say that it is very beautiful inside and it would be a great pity to visit Pisa and not see it. The frescoes and carvings are quite spectacular but it doesn’t overwhelm you in the way that the Florence Duomo does. I sat down for a while, just admiring the surroundings and enjoying a bit of peace, away from the tourist burble. Suddenly there was an almighty crash which sounded like the dome was caving in and I leapt to my feet and headed to the door as quickly as I could. Had the tower finally succumbed despite its additional support? When I reached the door I discovered that it was now absolutely pounding with rain and that a thunderstorm had slipped out from the hills and was now directly over the town. I decided to brave the downpour and try to find somewhere for lunch. I ran blindly down to the other end of the now very soggy Field of Miracles, through an archway and by pure luck, I thought, straight into a café. It was a self service affair, with various dishes laid out behind a glass counter on hotplates. I didn’t really have an appetite for the huge mounds of pasta based meals on offer, so I opted for a medium sized pizza which seemed to be calling to me. In fact the storm had driven me to the worst pizza in Italy. The poor thing, which had looked quite tasty and shiny behind the glass, was dry, tasteless and lukewarm, the three elements guaranteed to detract from a lunch. I wondered if they produced them specially for English people because they think we like them like that, I could find no other explanation, as surely no Italian would have eaten it. At least I had a lukecold can of coke to wash it down with. After this highly uncharacteristically bad Italian lunch, I returned to investigate some more of the architecture. I had a quick look in the baptistry, but it didn’t seem to have any of the atmosphere of the Duomo, though the pulpit from where the baptising presumably takes place

was quite impressive, being a sort of stand-alone affair. I then discovered, lying back behind the other buildings, a great, long structure which ran the whole length of the piazza. I don’t know what I was expecting when I entered it, but I don’t really expect cemeteries to look like this. It’s a big oblong shaped set of cloisters really, open-air and with a smaller oblong of garden in the middle round which the cloisters cloister. All the ‘graves’ as such are presumably below the engraved paving stones on which you walk, which is disconcerting to say the least. The place has a very strange atmosphere and was apparently bombed during WW2, and not surprisingly it’s all rather dilapidated. It was worth visiting and rewarding for its sheer peculiarity, but I didn’t stay too long as I could feel a touch of melancholy creeping up on me – or perhaps it was just the pizza. I then made my way slowly back up the other side of the piazza which is lined much more cheerfully with gift shops and stalls, managing to stave off the almost irresistible urge to buy one of the little leaning models. I also had a look round the museum which contains all the bits and pieces, mostly Roman, that they’ve found in the area. It has a great walled garden which has a wonderful view of, inevitably, the tower. As I walked slowly back through the town, I realised that Pisa is actually a very nice place. It’s neat and clean and well laid out and its tourist bit is all neatly stacked in one square – the Campo dei Miracoli is one big show-off really - and the rest of the town can get on with things undisturbed, save for the little snake of tourists coming and going from the station. It must be a great place to live, though I’m still not sure where or whether there is a beach. Apparently the sea has receded over the years, but I never found out how far and whether that included low tide. There was one final surprise, but I didn’t find out about it until I was safely back in Florence and discovered a whole six pages devoted to Pisa in my guide. I had walked right by the tiny church known as Santa Maria della Spina without noticing it, I think I was too busy chastising the Arno. It was allegedly built to house an unusual relic: a thorn preserved from the Crown of Thorns which Christ wore on his way to crucifixion. And I missed it! I now have a reason to return next time I’m passing, but I don’t think I really need one. And of course I still have my gravity experiment to conduct now that the tower is open again. Perhaps I’ll use a pizza. Copyright John Webber 2009.