Pisa

Pisa has more to see than just the Leaning Tower

Pisa is the ultimate Tuscan day trip. Millions of people descend annually on the Leaning Tower and its neighboring architectural miracles on Campo dei Miracoli square. Few travelers, however, venture beyond this monumental grassy square into the rest of the city.

The city began as a seaside settlement around 1000 B.C. and was expanded into a naval trading port in the 2nd century B.C. By the 11th century, Pisa had grown into one of the peninsula's most powerful maritime republics, along with Venice, Amalfi, and Genoa. Riding a high tide of wealth in the late Middle Ages, the Pisa’s officials created monumental buildings.

Pisa's main claim to fame since the end of its naval power—aside from that iconically slanted edifice, of course—has been its university, one of Italy's top schools, which was established in 1343. Pisa was also the birthplace of the great physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), a man prone to dropping uneven weights from the Leaning Tower and making “blasphemous” statements about Earth revolving around the Sun.

© 2009, Wiley Publishing, Inc.