The monumental complex of Piazza del Duomo, the Cathedral’s square of Pisa, includes four buildings of outstanding artistic, cultural, religious and historical value: the Cathedral, the Bell Tower, the Baptistery, and the Monumental Cemetery, shining with the white beauty of marble over a vast lawn that outlines its physical space and enhances its symbolic significance. They were conceived as a magnificent project with the purpose of showing the world the cultural, economic and political value of the city of Pisa, which was a Maritime Republic at that time, and a power of the Mediterranean Sea in the tenth and twelfth centuries. The monuments of the Cathedral Square are sacred places and represent the most significant stages of the Christian life cycle, from birth to death along the path of faith. In construction and decorative solutions, they represent a unique style, defined as Pisan Romanesque, which has been an important stage in the development of Western plastic and architectural arts and which reflects the multiple cultural influences (Arab, Byzantine, Lombard, Roman) that characterised the composite picture of Europe at that time.
[expand title=”Piazza del Duomo – Cathedral Square Artistic and scenographic beauty, spiritual value, historical testimony”]
The poetic name of Piazza dei Miracoli, “Square of Miracles”, was given to the square by the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, who so named the set of monuments consisting of the Cathedral, the Bell Tower, the Baptistery and the Cemetery. The Square of Miracles excites and marvels each visitor who walks past its entrances for the unique feeling conveyed by the fascinating dialogue between the various buildings. Aesthetically speaking, the square is a harmonic whole with recurring elements, like the white marble walls and the geometric inlays, the blind arches, the levels of small columns surmounted by small round arches. As to its symbolic perspective, Piazza dei Miracoli is the expression of a consistent meaning: the sacred monumental area accompanied the faithful throughout their entire life cycle, from entrance in the Christian community, celebrated with baptism, to growth and maturity with the sacraments and special religious ceremonies, until the resting of mortal remains, first around the cathedral and then in the Camposanto, the Cemetery. In the High Middle Ages the square was the heart of religious life, but also of civic life as it contributed to create a sense of belonging to a community and provided citizens with a strong reason to be proud. In subsequent centuries, it became a significant place where collective traditional and civic events were held.[/expand]
[expand title=”Historical reasons of the specific positioning of the Cathedral Square”]
Why did the Pisans erect their new Cathedral in a position that was marginal to the town centre in the High Middle Ages? The answer to this question will help us understand the value of the monumental square as a concrete and artistic expression of the power and wealth of the city of Pisa. The site was located along the North-Western section of the ancient city walls and was bordered by a river, today disappeared but navigable at the time, that was called Auser, which flowed into the Arno, while the Northern side bordered on tilled fields that supplied the city. The area was in a favourable position within the Tuscan road and river network, as shown by recent archaeological studies that identified a river port along the course of the Auser not far from the present square. For this reason, the building yard for the Cathedral occupied an excellent position to benefit from this river port and easily receive the construction materials – marble and wood – that were quarried from caves or removed from the forests of the nearby Pisan Mountains. The port on the river Auser seems to have been operating in the Etruscan Age, until the fifth century AC, and played an important role in the development of the settlement of Pisa as a maritime centre of the upper Mediterranean region.[/expand]
[expand title=”The Cathedral”]
Sacred buildings had already been erected in the site of the Square of Miracles in the early Christian Age, to be later replaced by the magnificent Cathedral of Saint Mary, founded in 1064. The huge building yard was set up with the wealth conquered after the victorious expedition of Pisa against the Saracens of Palermo, from where the Pisan ships returned loaded with a loot that became legendary. Pisa was having its golden age at that time, being recognised as one of the greatest powers of the Western Mediterranean Sea. Medieval building yards were operated with a good level of work rationalization, both as regards the supply of materials and their transportation, for the timing of the various stages of the building process based on the seasonal climate, and also for the organization of workers, building masters and artists, who were often mentioned in inscriptions in the same monuments to pass their memory down in eternity. That happened in Pisa too. Epigraphic inscriptions on the walls of the Cathedral tell the story of the construction of the marvellous Christian temple in “marble as white as snow”, designed by architect Buscheto, whose sarcophagus is immured in the same wall. Roman slabs were used for the construction of the side walls, perhaps to underline the solidity of the powerful city of Pisa that, at that time, defined itself as “the other Rome”. The building and façade were completed by architect Rainaldo and consecrated in 1118. The ground plan is in the shape of a Latin Cross, with five naves in the central body and three aisles in the transept with apses: an elliptical cupola rises at the crossing point of the transept with the main nave, and multiple colonnades divide the space by creating visionary perspectives that recall ancient mosques, such as bichromatic marble tarsias and other decorative elements inspired by the traditional Muslim art of the same epoch. The apsidal basin contains a mosaic of the beginning of the fourteenth century depicting a Christ in majesty between the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist, the latter being a work by Cimabue. The decoration of the Cathedral continued over the subsequent centuries, but, at the end of the sixteenth century, a fire caused the wooden lacunar ceiling to be restored with the addition of the Medici’s emblem, new paintings and a fresco in the big cupola – The Assumption of the Virgin and Saints by the Riminaldi brothers, Girolamo and Orazio).[/expand]
[expand title=”The Baptistery”]
The Baptistery is the monument that represents birth, that is the entrance of the individual in the community of the faithful, and contains the 13th-century octagonal baptismal font by Guido da Como and the magnificent hexagonal pulpit by Nicola Pisano. The structure is built on a round ground plan designed by the architect Diotisalvi, who started the works in 1152. It was a choral work, meaning that the chronicles show the participation of all the citizens in its construction, particularly for the positioning of the tall pillars and granite columns received from the Island of Elba and from Sardinia. The Baptistery is made in the same style as the Cathedral, with wide blind arches at the basement, the crown of the arcade at the first level, bichromatic marble for the cladding. The building shows Lombard and Byzantine influences (particularly in the main portal) and seems to have been conceived to recall the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, in memory of the bonds of the city with the Eastern world and of the deeds of the Crusaders in the Holy Land. The Baptistery has four portals, which coincide with the four cardinal points: the major portal, on the western side, opens before the Cathedral and shows Romanesque decorations with bas-reliefs on Biblical themes and figures, particularly on Saint John the Baptist, but also with depictions of the months. In the second half of the 13th century, Nicola Pisano and his son Giovanni made the Baptistery even more majestic by adding Gothic ornaments like cusps and pinnacles to the upper levels, and the arcades were decorated with a number of busts of prophets and evangelists. In the subsequent century, the building was covered with a spectacular double cupola.[/expand]
[expand title=”The Bell Tower”]
The Bell Tower of the Cathedral was erected on a circular ground plan in 1173. The author of the project was Bonanno Pisano or perhaps Diotisalvi. It is one of the most famous Italian monuments worldwide, visited and photographed every day by crowds of enraptured tourists. Rising 58 metres above the ground, the bell tower is a surprising monument that combines an extraordinarily fine composition with an impressive mass, enriched by a characteristic leaning position that challenges terrestrial gravity. Its external aesthetic rigour is based on eight levels. The first level consists of the plinth, with round blind arcades (as in the Cathedral and Baptistery), surmounted by six walkable open galleries, each consisting of 30 small columns with small round arcades; the tower is topped by a bell cell that can be reached by climbing almost 300 steps, embellished by a peculiar decoration characterised by the use of two colours. The huge marble cylinder of the Bell Tower has a hollow core, which served the function of making the entire building body lighter and facilitating construction works. But how did the bell tower become the Leaning Tower? Due to the nature of the layers of sandy and clayish soil under its foundation, the tower soon began to tilt dangerously; however, its inclination did not seem severe enough to cause the collapse of the monument. Over the centuries, the tower required constant maintenance, with the replacement of columns, capitals or other elements damaged by atmospheric agents or by other special events, such as earthquakes. Surfacing water was removed in the nineteenth century from around the base of the tower and iron tie-rods were inserted to make the structure more stable. However, contrary to expectations, those measures worsened the inclination because they altered the fragile equilibrium of the monument and were not based on in-depth studies on the nature of the foundation soil or on the static and structural features of the precious building. During the twentieth century, and particularly during the most recent restoration and protection campaign promoted by the Ministry of Public Works, an interdisciplinary approach was adopted and an international Commission prepared an action plan to stabilize the Bell Tower and preserv it over time. Today the leaning angle of the Bell Tower is approximately 5.5 degrees (10%). It is constantly monitored and has been consolidated to ensure the continuity of this outstanding art piece with its incredible tilt.[/expand]
[expand title=”The Cemetery (Camposanto)”]
Around the seventies of the 13th century, Federico Visconti, the Archbishop of Pisa, donated the land and vegetable gardens located in the vicinity of the church complex for the construction of a new cemetery to receive the sarcophagi and the Roman tombs reused for the burying of the most prestigious and powerful members of the Pisan community. This would free up the space around the Cathedral, which could be better used by the general population – and this is how the idea of the Square of Miracles took shape. The cemetery was erected on the plot of land at the north-west of the Cathedral, parallel to the river, and designed as a broad rectangular colonnade with the ancient sarcophagi placed at its centre, in the open air, and a cycle of frescoes painted along the internal galleries of the cloister during the fourteenth century with Histories of the Pisan Saints and the Old Testament. The works were completed by artists like Francesco Traini and many other Florentine painters, including Buonamico Buffalmacco, who was the main character of many tales by Boccaccio and Taddeo Gaddi. The collection of sinopites, the preparatory drawings of the frescoes of the Cemetery, are today exhibited in the Sinopite Museum, houses in the thirteenth-century building of the Spedale Nuovo (New Hospital). This building was erected to the order of Pope Alexander IV starting from 1257 and put up sick and poor people, pilgrims and orphans for centuries. Its factory defined the southern margin of the Cathedral square.[/expand]