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PISA is synonymous with its odd inhabitant, the leaning Tower. You could be forgiven of not noticing anything else in this city given that this structure is considered one of the wonders of the world. However, Pisa is a beautiful city that has much more to offer. It lies near the mouth of the Arno river just 10KM from the Ligurian sea. It was once an important naval base for the Romans in their advance out of Italy and into the rest of Europe and in the middle ages it even had its own fleetand all of the Tuscan coast. As far as fame goes apart from being the "birthplace" of the leaning Tower, Pisa can boast to being the birthplace of Galileo who used the famous tower for his experiments on the laws of gravity. While you may may know of Galileo, who knew that Pisa is the t is also the birthplace of Leonardo Pisano. And if you are ask yourself who this is, if I say that he was known as Leonardo Fibonacci and he wrote his great work Liber abaci in which he introduced the Latin-speaking world to the decimal number system and the Fibonacci sequence, that makes its appearance in all guises but most recently in the Famous book The daVinci Code. Apart from the Tower that is situated in a beautiful grassy banked square, the other buildings, the Duomo , the Baptistry and the monumental cemetery of the Camposanto, keep the Tower company on the same stretch of lawn. The leaning of the tower is due to the sandy content of the soil that makes the foundations unstable and so it is not suprising to note, once you have straightened up that the baptistry leans in the opposing direction to the tower. Apart from the square, the rest of the city maintains its medieval feel and makes for an ideal place to ramble and soak in some atmosphere. Along the river, in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo , the historic papal presence is to be found in a fine collection of ecclesiastical art and sculpture while the Arsenale houses the finds of the excavations taking place at the ancient harbour. |