Two routes that will make you fall in love with these famous Tuscan “villages”. In Lucca you will cross the ancient walls, passing through San Frediano to end in the beautiful Piazza del Duomo. The iconic Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa, with its baptistery and above all its Leaning Tower, does not need any introduction. The journey to Pisa and Lucca will take you to the discovery of two splendid Tuscan cities, rich in art and history. Our Tuscan journey will start from the magnificent Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa, a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1987, where four very white masterpieces of medieval monumental art stand out on a wide expanse of green lawn: the famous Campanile or Leaning Tower, the Camposanto , the Baptistery and the Duomo. Ancient center of city life, the complex represents a destination of inestimable value for the harmony of its architectural jewels that deserved the definition of “miracles” by the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. We will visit the interior of the Baptistery, whose construction was begun in 1153 by Diotisalvi, architect of the church of the Holy Sepulcher, and was completed in the fourteenth century. Cylindrical in shape, of white marble and surrounded by arcades on columns, the Baptistery boasts the primacy of the largest baptistery in Italy; in the center are the baptismal font where Galileo Galilei was baptized in 1564 and the splendid pulpit completed around 1260 by Nicola Pisano, protagonist of the great Italian Gothic sculpture, together with his son Giovanni, in turn the author of an equally extraordinary pulpit in the nearby cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, the medieval cathedral of Pisa, tangible testimony of the prestige and wealth of the Maritime Republic at the moment of its apogee, is a building with a monumental facade marked by four orders of arches and embellished with precious inserts of polychrome marble. Inside the church there are valuable artistic interventions from different eras including, next to the pulpit by Giovanni Pisano, performed in conjunction with the creation of the Madonna and Child in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the large apsidal mosaic of Christ enthroned between the Virgin and San Giovanni di Cimabue miraculously survived the fire of 1595.The visit continues to the Camposanto, the ancient cemetery where the major city personalities such as the rectors and the most prestigious professors of the University of Pisa, the rulers and the most in view of the city that often used sarcophagi from the Roman era of great value for burials. Finally we will admire the famous Leaning Tower, whose structure, tilted due to a subsidence in the ground that blocked its construction for a long time, was begun in 1173, resumed in 1275 and completed in the second half of the fourteenth century. Cylindrical in shape, with blind arches in the lower part, the tower incorporates the main decorative motif of the Duomo in the six orders of loggias. Leaving Piazza dei Miracoli, we will move towards the Arno, to stroll through the historic center among magnificent buildings and palaces. Piazza dei Cavalieri will amaze us with its rich history as an ancient Pisan political center, probably the site of the Roman Forum and transformed by Cosimo I de ‘Medici into the center of the Order of the Knights of Santo Stefano, born to defend the Tuscan and Mediterranean coasts from Turkish and pirate fleets. Here is the Palazzo dell’Orologio, famous for being the place where Count Ugolino was held prisoner and died of hunger with his family. And then again we will admire a small jewel set on Lungarno Gambacorti: the Church of Santa Maria della Spina, an extraordinary example of Pisan Gothic built on the riverbed in 1230 and which in 1333 received the relic of a thorn from Christ’s crown.
Our tours in Pisa and Lucca are: 1) Pisa Cathedral, 2) Pisa Baptistery, 3) Camposanto, 4) Leaning Tower, 5) Pisa historic center, 6) Santa Maria della Spina church, 7) Tuttomondo di Keith Haring