Pisa

“ On returning, we had a fine view of Pisa. In the distance it appears like a city of white marble, with its tower leaning at one end, and the blue mountains far away in the background, looking, however, much nearer than is actually the case. Distance is almost annihilated in this clear, dry, Italian atmosphere, which also to a great extent prevents decay, the most ancient buildings looking often singularly fresh. "Antiquity refuses to look ancient in Italy; it insists on retaining its youthful aspect." ”

“ It is generally out of such a shadowy street as this that one comes into the dazzling Piazza del Duomo. But indeed, all Pisa is like that. You pass from church to church, from one deserted Piazza to another, and everywhere you disturb some shadow, some silence is broken, some secret seems to be hid. The presence of those marvellous abandoned things in the far corner of the city is felt in every byway, in every alley, in every forgotten court. "Amid the desolation of a city" this splendour is immortal, this glory is not dead. ”

“ As for Pisa at large, although it is not exactly what one would call a mouldering city--for it has a certain well-aired cleanness and brightness, even in its supreme tranquillity--it affects the imagination very much in the same way as the Campo Santo. And, in truth, a city so ancient and deeply historic as Pisa is at every step but the burial-ground of a larger life than its present one. ”

“ From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the first view of the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa lies—with Leghorn, a purple spot in the flat distance—is enchanting. Nor is it only distance that lends enchantment to the view; for the fruitful country, and rich woods of olive-trees through which the road subsequently passes, render it delightful.
The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and for a long time we could see, behind the wall, the leaning Tower, all away in the uncertain light ”

“ There they stood—fretted, fluted, colonnaded, crowded with lovely traceries, studded with lovely marbles, and showing in every line and detail all that loving enthusiasm which is the first and greatest characteristic of artistic genius. I can see those noble old first citizens who wanted Pisa to be great, calling to their aid the genius of such men as Pisano and Bonannus of Pisa and William of Innsbruck and Diotisalvi and all the noble company of talent that followed to plan, to carve, to color and to decorate. ”

“ Tired with their march across the wintry Apennines, the foreign soldiers found in Pisa a city full of friends. Tables were laid in the streets where all might sup on wine and meat and enjoy the hospitality of the city. Under foot the branches of pine and boughs of autumn roses exhaled their fresh aroma; and the ruined walls of the cracked and damp-stained palaces were hidden by the great squares of pale-crimson silk, gold brocade, and Turkey carpets that were hung from every window. ”

“ Thus alone in this place of death Pisa lives, ah! not in the desolate streets of the modern city, but fading on the walls of her Campo Santo, a ghost among ghosts, immortalised by an alien hand.
Coming last of all to the greatest wonder of the Piazza, it is really with surprise you find the Campanile so beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful tower of Italy. It is like a lily leaning in the wind, it is like the slanting horn of an unicorn, it is like an ivory Madonna that the artist has not had the heart to carve since the ivory was so fair. ”

“ Porto Fino! On our way to Castagnolo, at lovely Lastre a Signa, we paused at Pisa for a night.
“Pisa is a bald Florence, if I may say so; beautiful, but so empty and lifeless. There are houses there quite peculiar, however, to Pisa, most interesting for their local style. Very broad in effect are those flat blank surfaces without mouldings. The frescoes on them, alas! are now merely very beautiful blotches and stains of colour. ”

“ Desolate and sober enough on a day of rain, when the sun shines this gaunt outpost of Pisa, for it is little more, is as gay as a flower by the wayside. The road runs through it, giving it its one long and almost straight street, while behind the poor houses that have so little to boast of, lies a beautiful old Piazza, with a great palace seemingly deserted on one side and an old tower and a church with a beautiful façade on another. Always a prize of the enemy, Cascina in the Pisan wars fell to Lucca, to the Guelph League, and to Florence. ”

“ At last, after three quarters of an hour, we ran into the busy station at Pisa, that point so well known to every tourist who visits Italy. It is the highway to Florence, Rome, and Naples, just as it is to Genoa, Turin, or Milan; and just as the traveller in Switzerland must at some time find himself at Bâle, so does the traveller in Italy at some time or other find himself at Pisa. Yet how few strangers who pass through, or who drive down to look at the Leaning Tower and the great old Cathedral, white as a marble tomb, ever take the trouble to explore the country beyond. ”

“ To enter Pisa by the Porta Nuova, coming at once into the Piazza del Duomo, is as though at midday, on the highway, one had turned aside into a secret meadow full of a strange silence and dazzling light, where have been abandoned among the wild flowers the statues of the gods. For the Piazza is just that—a meadow scattered with daisies, among which, as though forgotten, stand unbroken a Cathedral, a Baptistery, a Tower, and a Cemetery, all of marble, separate and yet one in the consummate beauty of their grouping. ”

“ Still haunted by these memories, we took the carriage road to Pisa, over which Shelley's friends had hurried to and fro through those last days. It passes an immense forest of stone-pines—aisles and avenues; undergrowth of ilex, laurustinus, gorse, and myrtle; the crowded cyclamens, the solemn silence of the trees; the winds hushed in their velvet roof and stationary domes of verdure. ”

“ A STOP AT PISA Baedeker says that Pisa has a population of twenty-seven thousand two hundred people and that it is a quiet town. It is. I caught the spell of a score of places like this as I walked out into the open square facing the depot. The most amazing botch of a monument I ever saw in my life I saw here—a puffing, swelling, strutting representation of Umberto I, legs apart, whiskers rampant, an amazing cockade, all the details of a gaudy uniform, a breast like a pouter-pigeon—outrageous! ”

“ Once Pisa was on the sea, possessed a fine harbor, and in rich commerce was a rival of Genoa and Venice. She was a proud, eager, assertive city; of such worth that she was deemed a rich prize, and was captured by the Romans a few centuries B.C. Now the sea has left her and, with that, her commerce and importance in the world of trade. She is to-day so poor that there is nothing to tempt travellers to come to her save a magnificent climate and this wonderful group of buildings. The inhabitants are few and humble, her streets are grass-grown. Everything has stopped in poor old Pisa. ”

“ The city itself, has a sickly, dying or dead appearance. It is in fact, merely the corpse of the formerly powerful Pisa, the head of an independent republic of that name. For there was a time—from the 10th to the 14th century—when the State of Pisa was mighty in war and peace, on sea and on land. But contentions with the growing republics of Genoa and Florence crushed its power, and since the year 1406, Pisa, with her territory, has belonged to Tuscany. Art and science have, however, upheld the life of the city until a later period. ”

“ From the twelfth century, Pisa gave an impetus to the art by building its Duomo, its Baptistery, its Leaning Tower, and the cloisters of its famous Campo Santo; so many admirable works forming an era in the history of modern art, and in a brilliant manner opening the career on which so many distinguished men were to enter, rivalling each other in invention, in science, and in genius. In these monuments the union of Oriental taste with the traditions of ages gone by created an originality as grand as it was graceful. ”

“ And this is what I mean by saying that the charm of Pisa (apart from its cluster of monuments) is a charm of a high order. The architecture has but a modest dignity; the lions are few; there are no fixed points for stopping and gaping. And yet the impression is profound; the charm is a moral charm. If I were ever to be incurably disappointed in life, if I had lost my health, my money, or my friends, if I were resigned forevermore to pitching my expectations in a minor key, I should go and invoke the Pisan peace. Its quietude would seem something more than a stillness—a hush. ”

“ Here, in one grand square, within a stone's throw of each other, are the four wonders of Pisa; the great Duomo, or cathedral, the Baptistery, the Campo Santo, and the Leaning Tower—standing in a magnificent group by themselves in the open space, rendering all else near them shrunken, petty, and insignificant by their beauty and superb finish. These glorious structures seem like the newly-created wonders of [533] some magical workman, who has placed them here together in the quiet old city for the tourists of all nations to come and gaze upon, admire, wonder, and depart. ”

“ For Pisa herself is soon lost in the vagueness of a world thus delicately touched by sun and cloud, and seemingly so full of ruinous or deserted things like the beautiful great Church of Settimo, whose tower you may see far away in the golden summer weather standing quite alone in a curve of the river ”

“ There are a magnificent cathedral, rich in art treasures, a peculiar campanile of white marble which deviates 14 ft. from the perpendicular, known as the leaning tower of Pisa, several old and beautiful churches, a university, school of art, and library. Silks and ribbons are woven, and coral ornaments cut. In the 11th century Pisa was at the zenith of its prosperity as a republic, with a great mercantile fleet, and commercial relations with all the world. ”

“ Certainly the might of Pisa was great; her supremacy was unquestionable from Lerici to Piombino, but behind her hills Lucca was on watch, not far away Florence her friend as yet, held the valley of the Arno, while Genoa on the sea dogged her steps between the continents. Thus Pisa stood in the middle of the twelfth century the strongest and most warlike city in Tuscany, full of ambition and the love of beauty and glory. For it was now in 1152 that she began to build the Baptistery, and in 1174 the famous Campanile, a group of buildings with the Duomo unrivalled in the world. ”

“ But the same Corsican face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at this day, that a more commonplace solution of the coincidence is unavoidable.
If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its Tower, it may claim to be, at least, the second or third in right of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy visiter at every turn, escort him to every door he enters at, and lie in wait for him, with strong reinforcements, at every door by which they know he must come out. ”

“ As to Pisa, call it a beautiful town, you cannot do less with Arno and its palaces, and above all the wonderful Duomo and Campo Santo, and Leaning Tower and Baptistery, all of which are a stone's throw from our windows. We have rooms in a great college-house built by Vasari, and fallen into desuetude from collegiate purposes; and here we live the quietest and most tête-à-tête of lives, knowing nobody, hearing nothing, and for nearly three months together never catching a glimpse of a paper. ”

“ Then Genoa for two nights and a day, a “field day” of sight-seeing—four palaces, four churches, a drive and shopping! Pisa for another night and day; saw its incomparable group—Duomo, Campanile, Baptistery and Campo Santo. How little I had conceived of their magnificence and beauty! From Pisa to Siena. Such a wonderful old place as this is! We leave to-morrow for Naples, via Rome, for a day, to “do it,” and return to Rome for Holy Week and Easter. I set aside three months for Italy, but Rome and Florence are a world in themselves for me. It snowed here yesterday; so it is very cold to-day. ”

“ For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is full of beauty and repose, and the purple mountains gloriously seem to beckon us on deeper into the vineland. We have rooms close to the Duomo and Leaning Tower, in the great Collegio built by Vasari, three excellent bedrooms and a sitting-room, matted and carpeted, looking comfortable even for England. For the last fortnight, except the very last few sunny days, we have had rain; but the climate is as mild as possible, no cold, with all the damp. ”

“ This, you know, is the wood where Ugolino in Dante dreamed he was hunting when they had shut him up to starve in the Famine Tower at Pisa, and it deserves its fame. It is quite another world from the hot rich valleys below; among the trees there are fresh, English-looking meadows with daisies very big and very pink, and beyond—the wonderful Mediterranean coast, rose colour in the sunset. Pisa far down there showed every detail distinct, cathedral and leaning tower like toys ”

“ The beggars seem to embody all the trade and enterprise of Pisa. Nothing else is stirring, but warm air. Going through the streets, the fronts of the sleepy houses look like backs. They are all so still and quiet, and unlike houses with people in them, that the greater part of the city has the appearance of a city at daybreak, or during a general siesta of the population. ”