A slice of Pisa

08.11.2019 - 08.11.2019
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It seems unavoidable that roughly three weeks into any of my overseas journeys I am always overcome by a certain fatigue. It’s not ordinary sleepiness, it’s not depression, it’s not physical exhaustion. It’s just a kind of psychological fatigue, this state of jaded apathy, this idea that I’ve seen far too much already and nothing I could possibly see today could be anything better than all the amazing things I’ve seen already so why bother getting out of bed? It’s just so much nicer to stay under the doona and fart around on Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone instead.

It was early afternoon on Friday 8 November 2019 when I summoned the grit to get out of bed, shower and dress. I walked in the drizzle the short distance to Firenze Santa Maria Novella station along tight little streets lined with market stalls, most of which appeared to be selling genuine knock-off brand-name handbags. Handbags. So many handbags. How many handbags does the world need? The stench of vinyl was confronting, as were the tactics of the stallholders who kept stepping into my path, shoving handbags right under my nostrils and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Do I even look like the kind of person who would want to buy a handbag? For crying out loud. Just leave me alone, you dickheads.

I entered the vast, dull brown brick box of Firenze Santa Maria Novella station, bought my ticket under the not terribly watchful eyes of bored Italian Army soldiers carrying machine guns who looked like they would much rather be anywhere else, and boarded the Regionale Veloce (“Fast Regional”) train to Pisa Centrale, a long train of white, green and blue carriages with electric locomotives at each end. My carriage was empty when I boarded, but right before departure the carriage filled up with a large group of young male friends holding an extraordinarily animated conversation who wouldn’t quieten down. For Christ’s sake. I wish Italians came with some sort of remote control with volume buttons and a mute button on it so I could shut them up.

Of course, such a remote control doesn’t exist so I moved to another carriage which was slightly quieter. I toyed with the idea of using the earplugs I keep in reserve for long-haul flights. The train headed west down the valley of the Arno river through utterly uninteresting industrial towns and after about an hour it arrived at Pisa Centrale station.

There is only one real reason why most people come to Pisa, that reason naturally being the Leaning Tower, and I was no exception. The Leaning Tower was built in 1372 as the campanile (bell tower) of the adjacent Duomo (cathedral). The vast majority of European cathedrals are constructed in the very heart of the old town but for some reason Pisa’s cathedral was built well outside the city walls. Even now it is on the edge of town several kilometres northwest of the railway station.

I bought a bus ticket from a vending machine outside the railway station and caught a local bus to the Campo dei Miracoli, the “Field of Miracles”. Campo dei Miracoli is a large grassed enclosure containing the Leaning Tower, the Duomo, the Baptistry and other associated buildings.

I got off the bus and had to brave yet more sleazy market stallholders to enter the enclosure. I saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa at the other end of the Campo dei Miracoli with thousands of tourists milling around it. At first, I was underwhelmed. I had seen so many photographs of the Leaning Tower in my life, had seen it so often on TV and in movies, that it seemed too commonplace to be remarkable. It is only when I got close that I realised how special the tower is. It is leaning! It has been leaning for six hundred years! How has it leaned all these years without collapsing? Even if it weren’t leaning it would be a most remarkable specimen of campanile architecture and still worth seeing.

I bought a ticket to a tour of the tower. Tickets are limited and you have to buy a ticket for a certain time block to prevent the narrow stairwell being too crowded. A guide took us into the ground floor of the centre of the tower. The tower is hollow; you can look straight up to the sky. The interior of the tower is also very plain, there is none of the elaborate ornamentation you see on the exterior. On the middle of the ground floor is a pillar with a surveyor’s level affixed to the top; surveyors use this to measure any movement in the tower.

After the guide told us the history of the tower and rattled off a list of facts and figures, we were allowed to walk up the spiral staircase between the hollow centre and the external galleries. This was fun – because the tower is inclined, the staircase is much steeper on one side than the other.

There is an excellent view over the Campo dei Miracoli from the uppermost gallery of the Leaning Tower and the surrounding countryside. Pisa is a university city on the lower reaches of the Arno a few kilometres inland from where it flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The landscape is flat and marshy with mountains to the east. On top of the Leaning Tower is the ancient flag of the mediaeval Republic of Pisa, a red banner adorned with a white cross with bulb-like protuberances extending from the end of each cross.

The sun was setting as I descended the Leaning Tower. I entered the Duomo next door. The Duomo, a Romanesque cathedral built in 1092, was nearly empty except for a tiny number of other tourists I could count on both hands. This is a travesty. The Duomo of Pisa, if it isn’t the most magnificent cathedral I have visited, is right up there. The gilded ceilings! The amazing mosaic of Jesus Christ on his throne in the apse above the altar! The frescoes! The elaborate chapels off to the sides! The nine century-old mummified corpse of Saint Rainerius! The most skilfully sculpted pulpit you will ever see! The Duomo was far more inspiring than its mere bell tower just outside yet it was empty. Thousands of tourists were all gawking at the Leaning Tower and taking perspective-based photos of themselves holding the tower up with their fingers, and right in front of their noses is one of the world’s greatest religious buildings that they don’t want to enter? Philistines!

It was getting fairly late. After visiting one of the dozens of shonky market stallholders to buy a stainless steel model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa for my tower collection that sits on top of my stereo at home, I went for a nice easy walk into the centre of Pisa a couple of kilometres away. There were no tourists. A constant procession of tourist coaches come in their hundreds every day to the Campo dei Miracoli for tourists to take a few silly photos of the Leaning Tower who then promptly get back onto the coach and bugger off. They don’t know what they’re missing. Pisa is a university city with an awesome vibe, of young people enjoying themselves sensibly, of bars and bookshops and cafés and restaurants with affordable food. How European university cities make me wish I were young again!

I found a pizzeria where I ordered an Aperol Spritz and a pizza called “quattro stagioni” – four seasons. One quarter of the pizza had ham, another quarter had olives, the next quarter had artichokes, and the last quarter had mushrooms, each quarter representing a different season. Yum.

I walked a short way along the wide, muddy Arno, each bank lined with an illuminated promenade. I crossed the river and waited for my train back to Florence. The Regionale Veloce arrived on time at 21:32, a double-deck electric train with comfortable seats that was nearly empty. The train sped through the rain back to Firenze Santa Maria Novella where I arrived an hour later. The jaded apathy had faded. Perhaps a slice of Pisa is all I needed to get over my travel fatigue.

Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station