Travel Journal – Day #5

Hi!

Guess what?  I went to Pisa, Italy, today!

This is the Field of Miracles – you can see the Baptistery, the cathedral, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

We saw and climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was amazing!  I was pretty nervous, firstly because I’m a bit scared of heights, and secondly because the tower was really slanted.  It wasn’t nearly as tall as the Campanile, in Florence, which I climbed a few days ago.  That bell tower is a hundred feet higher than the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

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We took many pictures “leaning” or “pushing” against the Leaning Tower of Pisa!  It seems much easier than it is.  The mice wanted to try it out too!  So I let them take a few photos.

The mice in Pisa

Snowball

Snowflake

Snowball trying to “push over” the tower!

Snowflake trying to “stop” the tower from falling over!

I was originally not going to make a film with the Two Travel Mice, but I’ve changed my mind.  I filmed them a lot today, and I have footage for my other travel videos too.

We also went to the cathedral right by the Leaning Tower.  It is dedicated to Mary.  In that cathedral there is the famous lamp of Galileo Galilei – the very one that gave him his ideas of how the world works.  (Galileo was actually born in Pisa!  The story about him dropping orbs off of the Leaning Tower to test gravitational pull is probably false, however.)

This is the front of the cathedral.

We didn’t see the Baptistery from the inside, but we did see it from the outside!  This building was completed during three different stages: Roman Classical (the first level – plain arches over plain marble), Gothic (the second level – detailed spires and columns with statues and busts), and Renaissance (the dome).  The dome, if you noticed, has two different tilings.  The first, which is typical Italian, is the orange tiling.  It was much less expensive and faces the sea.  The second, which was much more expensive, does not face the sea.  The people of Pisa wanted to show off their wealth by using a more expensive tiling, which easily decays (and it has, over the years).

The first building is the Baptistery.

If you look closely at the dome, you can see that this tiling is different from the first picture. This is the expensive tiling.

Another fact about Pisa is that the Italian Renaissance actually started in Pisa, in the 11th century!  I never knew that before!  When the Medici family (who were the rulers of Florence) saw the wealth of the city’s trade, they captured it.  This caused the Renaissance to move from Pisa to Florence.

Pisa was amazing to visit!  I’m so happy that I could climb the Leaning Tower, and that I could see all of the amazing architecture and experience the many layers of history in that city.

Here’s a question: what is the angle at which the Leaning Tower of Pisa is leaning?  Feel free to answer in the comment box below!

Thanks for reading!

The Director

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