Piazza del Duomo: Pisa Travel Guide (4.7★)

Four buildings on one lawn

Everything here is white Carrara-type marble set on flat green grass. It sits inside the medieval city walls, and the walls run along the square’s northern edge. UNESCO listed the whole ensemble in 1987. The name Piazza dei Miracoli comes from the writer Gabriele D’Annunzio.

Walk the lawn from west to east and you pass through three centuries of Pisan Romanesque:

• Baptistery: begun in 1152 by Diotisalvi, and the largest baptistery in Italy. Staff regularly sing a few notes inside to show off the echo under the dome.
• Cathedral: begun in 1063 by Buscheto and paid for with spoils from a naval raid on Palermo. Its facade is stacked with arcaded galleries and the flanks carry grey-and-white stripes.
• Leaning Tower: the cathedral’s bell tower, begun in 1173. It started tilting on soft subsoil before the third storey was finished. Engineering work between 1990 and 2001 reduced the lean and reopened it to climbers.
• Camposanto: a long cloistered cemetery along the north wall, lined with Roman sarcophagi and frescoes restored after bomb damage in 1944.

Arriving on foot or by train

Pisa San Rossore station is a few minutes’ walk from the square’s western gate, and regional trains from Lucca and Florence stop there. Most visitors arrive at Pisa Centrale instead, about 2 km south. From there the walk takes roughly 25 minutes: up Corso Italia, over the Arno at Ponte di Mezzo, then through Borgo Stretto’s arcades.

From Galileo Galilei airport, take the PisaMover shuttle to Centrale and continue on foot or by local bus. The square is open around the clock, but the monuments close in the evening. Check their hours on the official site the day you go.

Tickets, the tower and the lawn

The tower runs on timed entry with a small group per slot. Slots sell out in summer, so book online in advance. Bags go into the cloakroom before you climb, and children under eight are not admitted.

The stairs spiral up worn marble for roughly 250 steps. Because of the lean, you can feel the climb pull you towards one wall and then the other.

The cathedral also needs a ticket or timed pass from the ticket office on the square, even though entry to worship is free. Inside, look for the bronze lamp linked to Galileo, who was born in Pisa. Allow two hours for the tower plus the cathedral, and half a day if you want all four buildings and the museums.

Getting the shot without the scrum

This is among the most-reviewed squares in Italy, and the strip in front of the tower fills with people doing the “holding it up” pose. A few habits help:

• Stay off the grass. Guards whistle at anyone who crosses the roped lawns, so photograph from the paths.
• Early morning and evening, when the day-trip coaches from Florence and the cruise port at Livorno have gone, are the calmest times in the square. It stays open all night, so a late walk around the floodlit marble costs nothing.
• The souvenir stalls on Via Santa Maria and at the western gate draw pickpockets. Carry your phone in a front pocket.
• For a view with fewer people in it, climb the Mura di Pisa walkway on the walls. The access point is near the square, and you look down over the whole lawn from above.

Pay for tickets by card at the office or online. Cafés just outside the walls on Via Santa Maria are quieter than the kiosks inside.