Exploring Pisa – the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Luminara festival!

Well, it’s time to actually start talking about our time in Italy, yay! As I mentioned in the post about our plan for Italy, we are in Montecarlo, which is a little town about 60km west of Florence. Aside from having the most awesome agriturismo to stay at (more to come on that in another post), Montecarlo is a great place to be because of the proximity to so many fun things in Italy, including the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

Another 45km southwest of Montecarlo is Pisa, most well known, of course, for its crazy tower. We ended up going to this city twice once to visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa (which, spoiler alert, was way cooler than expected) and second to go to a yearly festival held in Pisa, called Luminara.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

Well, just about everyone knows or has seen pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We went in a bit skeptical, figuring we should go see it since we were in the area, but not imagining that it could be that cool. But, as soon as we walked into the piazza the Leaning Tower of Pisa is in, we paused in awe. It was leaning so much and it was so cool. This is only the second time on this trip we’ve been stopped in our tracks because something was so awesome, and it was completely unexpected.

To give a little background, the Leaning Tower of Pisa started being constructed in 1173 and already started to have a tilt when the second floor was going up, in 1178 (only five years later!). It started to sink both because of the design and the soil underneath. The only reason it is still standing today is because there was no construction for almost a hundred years because of wars and this time gave the three completed floors time to settle into the soil.

The top (7^th) floor of the tower and the bell chambers weren’t completed until 1372. The bells were put into the chambers in the 1600s (I think) and they were rung each day by people on the ground. As you can imagine, this was not good for the stability of the tower.

Over time, there were lots of tries to straighten and stabilize the tower, but the one that “stuck” was in the 1990s (isn’t that nuts? So recent!). However, because of tourism, they didn’t want to completely eliminate the tilt, just to stabilize it. What they ended up doing was removing some of the soil from the base that is higher and stabilizing the interior as well. Apparently the tower is now safe for at least 200 years, woohoo!

It was crazy to see how much the Leaning Tower of Pisa actually tilts, and it was super difficult to capture it on camera. I think if you compare the right and left side of the tower in the below two pictures it is incredible how severe the lean is (over 4 degrees from vertical if you are counting!).

We had purchased tickets to climb up to the top of the tower (travel note: you have to reserve these online at least 24 hours in advance, as they only let about 30 people in every 15 minutes to maintain safe stability). We got to the piazza (after parking about a 15 minutes walk away – way better than driving into the city/area), dropped our bag off to the bag check and then headed in!

What I enjoyed on the way up was that you could really feel the lean going left and right. And, because of all the traffic over the years you can see the stairs have gotten worn on the left and right sides. Some people were super nervous about the tilt (I think especially those afraid of heights), but we did pretty well going up, with no real motion sickness or vertigo. Score!

It was really fun to be at the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa! You could see the view of the entire Piazza dei Miracoli. We didn’t go into any of the other buildings, but they are all gorgeous and I’m sure a fun place to spend some time. And when we took a picture with the columns in it we were reminded of how lean-y it is.

After spending lots of time on top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (it felt so peaceful, especially being out of all the crowds below!) we headed back down all the stairs and hung out a little more outside the tower, admiring its engineering craziness. We, of course, had to take some of the dorky visual effect pictures that are a classic around here.

We didn’t know this before we got there, but there is actually a wall that goes around a lot of Pisa, that also surrounds this plaza. The whole wall runs for about 5km, but we walked about half of it. The cost to go up there is 3 Euros a person and it was definitely worth it! There is one shorter area to start with, that also gives great views of the Piazza dei Miracoli. Doesn’t the Leaning Tower of Pisa just look so cute sticking out behind us?

When we walked the other direction (the longer portion) we entered a more residential area, but there were still some really neat views of the Leaning Tower of Pisa It reminded me of when I lived in midtown with my sister and I could see the Empire State building from my bed. It’s such a strange feeling to live next to an icon that people travel across the world to see, so it was neat to see people living in the shadow of this icon.

There were also sections where there were higher barriers saying no photography, but it was totally random and made no sense! So Damian said f* it and went for it anyway. What. A. Rebel.

After the walk that ended our first day at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but we were going to return in a few days for the Luminara festival!

The Luminara festival in Pisa

We were pretty excited when we learned we were going to be in the area during Luminara, which occurs on June 16 every year in Pisa. Luminara is a festival that honors San Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa. San Ranieri was alive in the 1100s and spent his life helping others, so in 1688 the Duke of Tuscany put San Ranieri’s body in a marble tomb and started this tradition of honoring him, which involves lots of candles lighting up the city!

The festival reminded me a little bit of fourth of July in Boston. The streets along both sides of the Arno river (the river that runs through the city) are shut down and there are vendors and revelers that set up all along them. The pinnacle of the celebration are fireworks, which, because of the 9pm sunset, start at 11:30pm.

We decided to go into Pisa on the earlier side to avoid traffic and got in around 3pm. We returned to the Piazza dei Miracoli and hung out there for a few hours – napping, playing backgammon (it was not a good day for me on that end), reading and looking at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Around 6pm we started walking toward the Arno river and got our first view of this central area of Pisa, which we hadn’t seen on our previous trip to the city!

When we got to town there were still crews setting up for the festival. Essentially what happens is that each of the buildings puts up little wooden structures on their façade and then the city comes and puts candles (real candles, no electric here!) along the structures. Once the sun goes down it results in a beautifully lit city.

That being said, this is a lot of work. You can see below that there were three crane crews placing candles, just in this view. We saw so many cranes working around the city, and even then, there were structures that didn’t have candles in them by the time the sun went down.

We started by having a drink and some apertivo at a local bar and then basically just walked up and down the river for a few hours. We crossed a bridge right when the sun was setting which made for some gorgeous views. Also, in the below picture you may be able to see all the people sitting on the walls along the river. They had been camped out for hours, waiting for the 11:30pm fireworks.

We continued to walk around the city, enjoying the Italian architecture, the student atmosphere and the festive environment. Almost every alley we looked down had some sort of live music being played – it was great! The sun set and then about an hour later it was dark enough to really see the lights on the buildings. It was a pretty neat effect (even though the wind had blown out ~50% of the candles, booo … but I guess that’s what happens when you go real instead of electric).

We are old farts and neither of us are super into fireworks so we decided to leave around 10:30pm. Yes, we have become those people who would rather “avoid the crowds” instead of staying until the end of the party. When did this happen? 2004? Ok, fair.

Ha, anyway, our walk back to the car took us past the Leaning Tower of Pisa again, and she was a beauty all lit up at night. It was a perfect way to end our second (and final) day in Pisa, a city we enjoyed more than we thought we would!

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Read more about our time in Italy using the links below:

• Italy Country Recap – What we loved (and didn’t love) in our six weeks there
• Italy – The plan for our six weeks here
• Italy – Visiting Pisa – the Leaning Tower and the Luminara festival (you are here!)
• Italy – Our day in Lucca
• Italy – Life on an agriturismo in Italy Part 1: Montecarlo (Tuscany)
• Italy – Four days in Bologna
• Italy – Life on an agriturismo in Italy Part 2: a vineyard in the Chianti region (Tuscany)
• Italy – Wineries and wine tasting in Chianti
• Italy – One day in Siena!
• Italy – Life on an agriturismo in Italy Part 3: Emilia Romagna
• Italy – Parmigiano Reggiano cheese factory and Balsamic Vinegar producer tours
• Italy – Hiking Cinque Terre
• Italy – Our three days in Florence
• Italy – Brunello wine tasting and visiting thermal baths
• Italy – Our three days in Rome