Day 28
Trip Start
May 08, 2008
1
27
59
Trip End
Jul 08, 2008
Florence,
Italy
Friday, June 6, 2008
We went with about fifteen of the people from LSU, and we all had to be broken in to two groups for the tour of Pisa. Luckily the group I was in had most of the people I have been hanging out with and we had a pretty cool tour guide. He was from Lucca, and anyone who knows the history between the major cities of Tuscany will tell you that they have not been on the best of terms in the past. We got some great stories from this guy throughout the day, most of which were in that kind of barely broken English that is so lovable. Before we went through the gates of the Pisa city center, he told us the story of the origin of the Miracle Square name held by this area: the baptistery, the duomo, the cemetery and of course the (leaning) torre
Lucca Wall
. There was an Italian poet who coined the phrase when he first walked through the Pisa city arch. He said that it was so beautiful, it must be divine, it must be a miracle (OK, not the best story in Italian/English it sounds much better).We walked in to the square and whipped out our cameras. It was very beautiful and, to my surprise, wide open, flat and covered in grass. The first in the line of sight when you enter the city is the baptistery, which has a unique (at least to me) half peaked/half domed roof. Just to the side of the baptistery is where we heard another couple of stories: The story of how the area was once a swamp (sounds like another of the worlds greatest cities, Chicago. The greatest, actually. It's science) where two great rivers collided. The mist used to be so great at this conjunction that one could not see the other side of the river(s). It was a great opportunity for the Roman empire to use as a port (even though it is FAR inland. I still don't get the logic of the supposed "empire," but apparently it worked), but they had to wrench it from the control of a few other interested parties. Anyways, after defeating the people of the land and the mountains that surrounded it, there settled a great city.
The church was designed by the first Architect/Engineer who used the first Roman experiment with the number system we use today (1, 2, 3, etc. vs. the old Roman Numeral system - you try finding the area of a space that measures MXII by MIIV)
Lucca Wall 2
. This is a great little bit that I managed to catch on video, but I literally was shooting from the hip so forgive its quality or lack thereof. Anyway, apparently the design was so perfect that on the wall to his tomb (outside of the church on the end nearest to the baptistery, on the left side) it says that he designed the building so that it could be built with the strength of ten virgins, which apparently is not that much. Inside, we heard another story in between flashes of our cameras. The pillars, upwards of sixty in total, were all more than ten meters in height. They looked to be about four feet in diameter and very well cut - almost perfectly round from what I could tell. They were also solid in stone, unlike most of the Roman pillars that were made up of hollowed out cylinders of stone and filled with brick and mortar. Here's the interesting bit. The city of Pisa has an abundance of marble mines around it, something like a thousand within a ten mile radius. Marble is nothing to them, it is so cheap. "We use it to throw at the pigeon" says our guide. However, the pillars in this church were made of granite from the mines of Sicily. These things were huge, and the trip to the source takes almost a full day at today's nautical speeds. Each of these pillars had to have a boat to themselves and had to be erected using the technology of the day. No one knows exactly how it was done, but there are theories that it was similar to the methods used to transport and erect an enormous Egyptian pillar, stolen by the Romans, in Rome (see the Piazza Popolo video, I believe it is the pillar in the center of this area)
Lucca Wall 3
. Pretty cool, yeah?Anyways, we went from the duomo to the baptistery. Our guide told us about how the roof used to be open in order to gather natural water for the fountain in the middle, used to baptize millions into Christianity. Recall the belief that if you walk through the doors to a holy place you are forgiven for all of your sins and transgressions (baptized) and the history of the transition from pageantry to Christianity, because it all was represented in this building. The dome at the top was added when it "came in to fashion for the period." It had a very cool effect on the acoustics of the building, which is demonstrated every half hour by the staff. A person goes to the center of the first floor (as close as they can, due to the fountain/pool in the very center) and asks the room to become silent. The doors close, and everyone holds their breath. The person in the center sings out a set of changing, harmonious tones that resonate with a greater echo and effect than anything I have ever experienced. It sent chills up my spine.
We left the baptistery and went around the church to view the leaning tower. We heard the stories about the building (only edifice on the grounds that had no architect to claim it, that it is not only leaning but curved with a little torque, it is slowly righting itself due to a thousand tons - 2 million pounds, FYI - of lead placed strategically at its base, that the reason for its lean is due to its extreme weight, the history of the land (swamps), and the shallow level of the water table (where soil is 100% saturated))
Lucca
. We then took the pictures of the building - stereotypical tourists leaning up against the lean, towards the lean, kicking the lean, Zenadining the lean with a header, etc. - then we headed off to have some pizza with Saverio, our staff friend from CAPA. After that, we got back on the buses and I had a nap on the way to Lucca.Our guide was really excited about showing us his city, which made it all the more interesting. The city grew rich by having the monopoly on silk trade from the East, but never wanted to stick out as a power. It wanted to keep a low profile, which is why our guide prepared us to think of the word "reserved" while we were inside the city walls. The walls themselves are pretty impressive and marked the beginning of our tour. They are ten meters high, about six meters thick, and they encompass the old city to this day (about three miles around). We were told that the walls were a place that meant so much to the citizens, not just because of their history and the feeling of security they brought but because of the memories that each person had that involved the walls: When our guide was born his mother took him there as soon as he was healthy enough, when he was a kid he played on the walls, when he became interested in girls he took them there, and when he had children of his own he started the process all over again. They are also a great place to reflect (see the picture of the Luccan girl in pink sitting on the wall)
Lucca 2
.We went in to the city and saw that it is still very prosperous (well dressed people, expensive stores, cars, restaurants, etc.). Apparently, the trade monopoly shifted in the last couple centuries to the paper market, specifically tissue and toilet paper. We went to the city center which was converted centuries ago from a coliseum to a city square with apartments and shops and restaurants where the old seats used to be. The church he took us to had one very distinctive feature - the only feature we really got to look at, actually, because we only spent about ten minutes inside. It was a crucifix with a very different style of Christ on it. The hair was dark, the skin was black, and the body was clothed and not bleeding. The style was that of the Eastern Christianity, which explains the discrepancy between this Christ and the one I am accustomed to. It was presented prominently at the time of the crusades when the Pope blessed the knights before they headed to Jerusalem. It was very interesting, and the fact that so many people - from kings to peasants, from Popes to pagans - had stood where we were standing in awe of this thing.
We walked around the city a little more after that, found our meeting spot, said goodbye to our guide, and picked up some bikes for only two Euro and fifty each. We made a circle around the city, taking our time and taking pictures. We filled up our water bottles at this fountain on the wall, but within about a half an hour we had to head back to turn in the bikes. We got some gelato (I had strawberry, crema, and Mandarin orange), and hiked back to the buses.
