England

Around the Town
Campo dei Miracoli

Campo dei Miracoli and the Leaning Tower of Pisa

This was our third time to Pisa. Pisa is a good place to stop for lunch while on your way to some other place in Tuscany. We flew in to the Pisa airport which is about a 10 minute bus ride from the Campo dei Miracoli so we stopped here for an hour or so on our way to Florence. We did not climb the tower to the top as we had done it on a previous trip. It's fun to watch all the tourists posing to take their photos acting like they are pushing the tower over or holding it up. Our little travelling sheep even got into the act in some of last photos on the page.

Around the Town: Various photos from around the town.

Campo dei Miracoli: The Piazza del Duomo ("Cathedral Square") is a wide, walled area at the heart of the city of Pisa, Tuscany, Italy, recognized as one of the main centers for medieval art in the world. Partly paved and partly grassed, it is dominated by four great religious edifices: the Duomo, the Leaning Tower (the cathedral's campanile), the Baptistery and the Camposanto.

It is otherwise known as Piazza dei Miracoli ("Square of Miracles"). This name was created by the Italian writer and poet Gabriele d'Annunzio who, in his novel Forse che si forse che no (1910) described the square in this way: 'L’Ardea roteò nel cielo di Cristo, sul prato dei Miracoli' meaning: "The Ardea rotated over the sky of Christ, over the meadow of Miracles."

Often people tend to mistake the term with Campo dei Miracoli ("Field of Miracles"). This one is a fictional magical field in the book Pinocchio, where a gold coin seed will grow a money tree.

In 1987 the whole square was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Italian: Torre pendente di Pisa) or simply The Tower of Pisa (La Torre di Pisa) is the campanile, or freestanding bell tower, of the cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa. It is situated behind the Cathedral and it is the third structure by time in Pisa's Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square).

Although intended to stand vertically, the tower began leaning to the southeast soon after the onset of construction in 1173 due to a poorly laid foundation and loose substrate that has allowed the foundation to shift direction. The tower presently leans to the southwest.

The height of the tower is 55.86 m (183.27 ft) from the ground on the lowest side and 56.70 m (186.02 ft) on the highest side. The width of the walls at the base is 4.09 m (13.42 ft) and at the top 2.48 m (8.14 ft). Its weight is estimated at 14,500 tones. The tower has 296 or 294 steps; the seventh floor has two fewer steps on the north-facing staircase. The tower leans at an angle of 3.97 degrees. This means that the top of the tower is 3.9 meters from where it would stand if the tower were perfectly vertical.

Tourists posing for photos pushing the town over or holding it up

Our little friend

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