Pisa Is More Than a Leaning Tower
- sophia.bailly
- Jun 1, 2023
- 6 min read
The first image that comes to mind when people hear “Pisa” is the famous leaning tower.
But for Gloria Villella, “Pisa” means home. After moving to Pisa from Colombia eight months ago, she said there is more to the town than the one tourist attraction.
“In general, it’s a beautiful city,” she said. “I am a person who likes to walk around. I know some of the culture of the city. I know this is a really homey city.”
Villella works at a local restaurant, Lo Sfizio, where she quickly learned that a lot of the stereotypes about Italian locals are untrue. Dramatic hand gestures and blunt comments are not representative of the entire Italian population. These stereotypes often paint Pisa’s residents as seeming unapproachable to tourists, she said.
“I know that people criticize people a lot in Italy,” Villella said. “The real thing I appreciate about Italians is that they are so friendly. They are friendly to whoever.”
But beyond Pisa’s personable community lies centuries of changes to the city’s economic status, political ties, and scientific inquiry. These different sectors of Pisa’s legacy grant the city an array of diverse history that is worth dissecting.
Unknown Origins of the Seaside City
Pisa’s origins remain a mystery. The Lingurian people, who were ancient inhabitants along the Mediterranean Sea, may have founded Pisa. However, historical documentation also points to the possibility that the Greeks founded Pisa in the 6th and 7th centuries.
Pisa’s economic and political importance was based on its presence as a seaside city where fishing and seafaring were plentiful. Pisa became a bustling commercial center for markets and trading.
An ongoing rivalry in the 10th century among Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, and Pisa led to power imbalances on the seas. Their naval fleets and merchants became their most prized possessions.
In the 10th century, Amalfi was the strongest maritime region, until Pisa conquered Amalfi in 1135. Pisa became the second maritime region. Then Genoa, which had helped Pisa fend off Muslim troops from dominating Mediterranean trade, took Pisa’s place as the dominating maritime power in 1284 after the Battle of Meloria.
Eventually, Venice would become the longest-running maritime region.
Today, the four Italian cities and towns host regatta competitions, which is a playful historical connection to their centuries of competition. The competition among the four regions is held at the start of each summer and there are specific rules and regulations to what boats the teams can use for the sake of fairness.
The regattas sail two kilometers during the competition, and the location of the competition changes each year. The cities are on an alternating schedule to be the host. The winning team receives the trophy to keep for a year until the next competition.
Even though its history as a seafaring city remains important in Pisa, in the 15th century the silt in the Arno River created a barrier between the city and the shoreline. Now, tourists don’t think of fishing and the seaside when they hear about Pisa. However, the impact that the city's navy and merchants had on Pisa’s economic prospects cannot be overlooked.
In the 12th century during the rising rivalry between the Ghibelline and the Guelphs, Pisa was a Ghibelline city. This means the city supported the imperial party and the Holy Roman Empire as opposed to the Guelphs who supported the Pope. This status helped Pisa rise in the ranks against other Italian cities — all of which were in a constant fight for power.
In the 1500s, Pisa worked to move past its Ghibelline policies and toward a more peaceful relationship with surrounding Guelph regions. Ghibelline economic structures relied on agricultural productivity, while the Guelps acquired most of their wealth from rich mercantile families.
The Middleman in Italian Conflict
Following the Punic Wars from 264 to 146 BCE, Pisa fell under Roman rule. The Punic Wars were fought between Rome and Carthage, which was a wealthy and powerful city that Rome was determined to surpass with its naval forces and technological advancement. Rome’s victory in the war helped the empire gain control of Tuscany.
Although Pisa was a powerful entity of the Roman empire at the time, there are no major Roman monuments or ruins found in the city today.
Pisa has a long history of falling under the control of other regions.
In the 14th century, Pisa existed in a limbo state between a republican region and a dictatorship. Pietro Gambacorti ruled Pisa as a dictator until his death led Pisa to fall under Milan’s rule. When Florence rebelled against Milan in 1405, Florence took Pisa under its control upon its victory.
Italy’s long history of falling under French, Austrian, and Russian control during 16th and 17th century conflicts bled into Pisa’s inability to exist without interference from other powers.
After the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the Grand Duke of Tuscany kept many of the old policies and hierarchical components of feudalism intact. As distress and frustration over Italy’s fragmented existence grew, discussion about unification surfaced and provoked the Italian people to rise in favor of Italian nationalism in 1848.
Pisa remained under Florentine rule until Italy’s unification in 1860.
Galileo Galilei and Scientific Inquiry
Galileo Galilei, a famous Italian astronomer who made waves in the scientific field for his research on the universe, was born in Pisa. His dad had sent him to the University of Pisa to study medicine, but Galileo picked mathematics instead.
It was at the University of Pisa that Galileo supposedly began questioning the scientific theories at the time. He would use his studies from Pisa to explain the heliocentric theory, which theorizes that the planets revolve around the sun. He used the Piazza del Duomo in Pisa as his scientific laboratory.
Throughout his life in Pisa, Galileo also studied and used telescopes to understand different structures of the universe. He found Jupiter’s moons, Venus’s phases, mountains on the moon, and the rings of Saturn.
History books and stories focus on Galileo’s contributions to science as a whole, but they often look past the importance of his upbringing in Pisa.
Outsider Appeal: The Tower
It is undeniable: The interesting history within Pisa’s borders is often focused on the iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa.
For more than 800 years the bell tower has been a subject of interest to architects because of its slight tilt that makes the building appear largely off-balance.
Aanya Gupta visited Pisa for a few days with her dad and a group of friends. Aside from trying gelato for the first time, she said seeing the tower was her main goal.
“It’s really chill,” she said. “It doesn’t feel rushed even though there are so many people.”
Although the Tuesday afternoon she visited the tower appeared crowded with tourists trying to take pictures “holding up the tower,” Gupta spent more than an hour enjoying the sunshine and sitting in the grass.
Eventually, Gupta and her three friends tried striking their own pose with the leaning tower. Two girls laid on the ground and held their feet up, and the other two girls stood on the opposite side of the tower with their arms pressed toward the sky. From behind the camera, the four girls appeared to collectively be holding the tower up.
Visitors spread across the pavement and take photos pretending to hold up the leaning tower.
The tower has had multiple generations of architects. The tower accompanies a larger architectural project for the cathedral, Duomo di Pasa, which stands among different Romanesque marble structures and monuments.
The tower began leaning as early as 1178 when its first three stories were built. The foundation of shifting clay and sandy soil is a likely cause for the building’s enduring tilt. Adding more stories to one side of the tower was the optimal solution at the time. However, the tower continued to tilt about two millimeters more per year.
Galileo, too, used the tower to his advantage with scientific experiments. He tested the effects of gravity from the top of the tower. He dropped two cannon balls of equal size but with different masses to see how far they hit the ground. This helped him uncover today’s knowledge that heavier objects do not fall faster with gravitational pull.
Souvenir stores and trucks are plentiful in Pisa.
Today, the tower leans 5.5. Degrees, or about 15 feet. It has survived four earthquakes, and a 2018 study found the main reason the tower has not fallen is its foundational attachment to the soil, which provides stability.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa might fit well on a keychain, shot glass, or souvenir snowglobe. But a walk through the city's streets and conversations with the local residents can open anyone’s eyes to the city’s impressive history.
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