Explore Pisa

Palazzo Blu is a former aristocratic residence on the Lungarno Gambacorti in Pisa, named for the blue facade found during its restoration. Run by the Fondazione Palazzo Blu, it shows the Fondazione Pisa's collection of Pisan art from the 14th to the 20th century, period apartments, a coin collection and temporary exhibitions.

Santa Maria della Spina is a small Pisan Gothic church on the Lungarno Gambacorti, founded around 1230 as an oratory by a bridge over the Arno. Its marble exterior carries gables, pinnacles and statues from the workshops of Giovanni and Andrea Pisano. In 1871 it was taken apart and rebuilt on higher ground to protect it from the river.

Piazza dei Cavalieri is Pisa's second main square, the political centre of the medieval city and later the seat of the Order of the Knights of St. Stephen. Giorgio Vasari remodelled the Palazzo della Carovana, with its sgraffito facade, in the 1560s; today it houses the Scuola Normale Superiore, beside the church of Santo Stefano and a statue of Cosimo I.

The Pisa Botanic Garden is the University of Pisa's botanical garden, founded in 1544 under Cosimo I de' Medici and entrusted to the botanist Luca Ghini as Europe's first university garden. It moved to its present site near the Piazza dei Miracoli in 1591 and has a botanical school, ponds, greenhouses and an old institute building with a shell-decorated facade.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the freestanding bell tower of Pisa Cathedral on the Piazza dei Miracoli, begun in 1173 and finished with its belfry in 1372. Soft ground made it tilt during construction; work from 1993 to 2001 reduced the lean to about four degrees. Visitors climb some 290 steps to the top, where seven bells hang.

Pisa Cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, is the oldest building on the Piazza dei Miracoli, begun by the architect Buscheto in 1064 and consecrated in 1118. Its arcaded marble front set the Pisan Romanesque style. Inside are Giovanni Pisano's carved pulpit of 1302–1310 and bronze doors made after a fire in 1595.

The Baptistery of San Giovanni stands opposite the west front of Pisa Cathedral and is the largest baptistery in Italy, about 55 metres high. Diotisalvi began it in 1152 in Romanesque style and the upper parts were finished in Gothic forms by 1363. Inside are a marble pulpit by Nicola Pisano from 1260 and a large octagonal font.

The Camposanto Monumentale is the walled cemetery on the north side of Pisa's Piazza dei Miracoli, a long Gothic cloister begun in 1278 by Giovanni di Simone. Its galleries hold Roman sarcophagi, tombs and 14th-century frescoes such as the Triumph of Death; a fire in July 1944 destroyed the roof, and the frescoes have been restored since.