Pisa Cathedral

On Pisa's Piazza dei Miracoli the Leaning Tower draws the crowds, but the cathedral was there first and it is the reason the tower exists at all: the campanile is simply its bell tower. Work began in 1064 under the architect Buscheto, paid for with plunder from a Pisan raid on Muslim-held Palermo, at a moment when Pisa was racing Venice to build the most splendid church of any maritime republic. The church was consecrated in 1118 and became the model for what is called Pisan Romanesque: striped marble, blind arcades and tier upon tier of little open galleries running across a façade of grey and white marble.

Before going in, walk around to the south transept to see the Portal of San Ranieri, which faces the tower. Its bronze doors were cast around 1180 by Bonanno Pisano and are the only doors to survive the fire of 1595; their twenty-four panels tell the life of Christ in a lively, almost cartoon-like style. The main façade doors are replacements made by the workshop of Giambologna after the fire. Inside, the space has an unexpected Eastern feel — black-and-white banding, raised pointed arches, granite columns taken from Palermo, an elliptical dome — and a gilded coffered ceiling bearing the Medici arms.

Three works justify a long look. The pulpit by Giovanni Pisano, carved between 1302 and 1310, is one of the masterpieces of Italian Gothic sculpture: curved panels crowded with figures, held up by statues of the Virtues instead of plain columns. It was dismantled after the fire and only reassembled in 1926, not quite in its original arrangement. In the apse, the great mosaic of Christ enthroned includes the head of St John by Cimabue, dated 1302 — his last documented work. And the bronze lamp hanging in the nave is known as Galileo's lamp, after the story that watching it swing gave him the idea of the pendulum; the lamp he would actually have seen is a smaller one now kept in the Camposanto next door.

Getting there

The cathedral stands on Piazza dei Miracoli, about 1.8 km from the centre of Pisa. Pisa International Airport (PSA) is only about 4.4 km away and is linked to Pisa Centrale station by the PisaMover shuttle; urban buses leave from the front of the station.