Pisa, city, central Italy, in the Toscana (Tuscany) regione. The city lies on the alluvial plain of the Arno River, about 6 miles (10 km) from the Ligurian Sea and 50 miles (80 km) west of Florence. Pisa lay by the sea until the 15th century, by which time accumulated silt deposited by the Arno River had completely cut the city off from the receding shoreline.

Pisa is now a quiet provincial university town that is renowned for its art and architectural treasures. The city also retains much of its 6.5-mile (10.5-kilometre) circuit of walls. Pisa is distinguished above all by a remarkable group of buildings in the Piazza del Duomo, the so-called Square of Miracles, located at the northwestern end of the medieval walled city. This piazza contains the cathedral, or Duomo; the baptistery; the campanile, or Leaning Tower of Pisa; and the camposanto, or cemetery.

Both the cathedral and the baptistery are built of white marble with strips of black in the Pisan Romanesque style, which features colonnades and the decorative use of pointed arches. The cathedral, begun in 1063, has a nave with double-vaulted aisles and transepts with single-vaulted ones, and a cupola at the intersection of the two axes. On the western front, the range of arches running around the base of the cathedral is repeated in four open arcades. A marvelous bronze door (c. 1180) by Bonanno Pisano, which depicts biblical scenes, survives on the southern side. Inside the cathedral is a splendid decagonal pulpit carved in white marble (1302–11; restored 1926) by Giovanni Pisano.

Leaning Tower of Pisa Facts

QUICK FACTS:

→ Name: Tower of Pisa, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Bell Tower of Pisa → Italian Name: Torre Pendente di Pisa → Location: City of Pisa, Italy. → Accommodation: Find Hotels in Pisa → Construction Year: started in 1173, finished in 1399 → Original Height: 60 m → Actual Height: 56.67m =highest side; 55,86m =lowest side → Stairs: 251 steps → Weight: 14,500 tonnes

located next to the Cathedral of Pisa, in Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of miracles) in the city of Pisa, Italy.

Click here to find Hotels in the city center of Pisa, near Leaning Tower of Pisa!

The building of the leaning Tower of Pisa, and especially its completion, represents the last element in the compliment of the ceremonial complex of monuments that enrich the Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of miracle)

The project included four representative monuments in the city of Pisa, Italy: the Cathedral of Pisa (Il Duomo di Pisa), the Baptistry, the Bell Tower of Pisa, Monumental Cemetery

Architecture style → The leaning Tower of Pisa is a 🏰 architecture, in Romanesque style.

You can climb to the top

That’s right – the most famous structurally unsound building in the world is open to visitors. Seriously though, since its restoration and slight un-tilting, the structure’s integrity is monitored constantly and the building hosts large numbers of visitors every day. If you want to climb to the top you should book tickets in advance.

The tower is currently stable

Lead counterweights are stacked on the tower during restoration in 1998.

The tower has survived centuries of well-meaning but misguided attempts to right it, including various engineers who added levels and arches of all different heights and one overzealous group who dug around the tower to open an underground tour (which only helped to fill the area with even more water). But someone finally got it right in the 21st century and as of 2001, the tower was officially declared stable for at least the next 200 years. In 2008 engineers found that the tower is officially no longer moving – the first time in its history that it hasn’t been slowly listing to one side. 200 years from now, let’s just hope we have the technology to save the tower for another 200!