Pisa Archives • Folksy Travel by Bill Smale

better known as the “leaning tower of Pisa“, when I was a kid we used to know The Torre di Pisa as “the leaning tower of pizza pie“. It is still leaning and it is leaning more than I ever imagined. It’s a very interesting place to visit and in my last 16 years coming to Italy many times I avoided it because I knew it would be a tourist nightmare. But this season it seems the amount of tourists is down quite a bit and I was urged by a friend to make the trip so, why not? One thing you should know is there are marble quarries nearby so it was easy to source marble for these structures. This is actually a whole complex with a cathedral, a supporting building and a graveyard for famous people which is the most extravagant graveyard I have ever seen. Here you will see just the photos related to the tower but you can see the other posts in succession or by doing a search by city name, pulling down the menu and selecting the search option.

The ticket Torre di Pisa — This is the ticket to see everything including going up to the top of the tower which is something you should do. I went in the afternoon but it is open very late until 10:30 PM. It was not crowded but the next day I noticed that the noon time reserved people were making quite a bit longer line

The complex Bill Smale — Proof I was there

Beautiful architecture Bill Smale — The architecture is really beautiful

Leaning pillar Bill Smale — I noticed this pillar was somewhat separated from its base in contrast with the other pillars. I don’t know if that’s because of the tower leaning away from this pillar

Marble stairs — The marble floors have been walked on by millions of people so they can be a little bit slippery. You need to be careful when walking up the stairs

Halfway up the tower — I’ll at the top you get some beautiful views

Cathedral renovations — You can see they are working on the cathedral

Brown administrative building — The Brown buildings are administrative offices and a place to keep your luggage which you need to do if you are coming up the tower. Anyway it’s better not even to have a backpack or bag with you because the steps can be a little bit challenging. You need both hands for safety.

Ticketoffice and museum — This is looking down on the museum and in the shady area you can see where the restaurants start. You will go down a gauntlet of people calling you into their restaurants which I find very irritating so I always walk around a city and look for a quiet restaurant out of the way where you see only Italian people eating. My experience with that has been very good

Restaurant road — Here you can see the restaurant road very clearly

You can tell it is leaning — I was trying to get as level as I could to show you that the tower is really leaning and interesting to walk around because you wind up going uphill and downhill into the left to the right

Narrow steps — I should add that the upper part of the staircase is extremely narrow so it’s best to go when it’s not crowded because it’s a little bit difficult to get the last third of the way up to the top

Keep it from falling down — I did my part to keep it from falling down

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