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Leaning Tower of Pisa
比萨斜塔 · Pisa, Italy
A soft foundation let the bell tower lean for eight hundred years: Galileo (in legend) dropped iron balls from it, and engineers spent eleven years daring to straighten it by only 38 centimetres
Know before you go
- Do not step on the closed lawns or climb the tower-base railings and any building plinths
- no bags of any kind or selfie sticks are allowed on the climb (they must pass security and be checked), and do not lean out over the railings at the top
- during Mass in the cathedral do not wander about sightseeing, and do not talk loudly or dress revealingly in religious places
This article is Not yet verified. Please check official announcements for prices, opening hours and dates.
Stories & people
Stories & people
Legend
Stories of Leaning Tower of Pisa
To be clear at the outset: Galileo dropping iron balls from the Leaning Tower is most likely legend. The story comes from a biography by his student Vincenzo Viviani: around 1589, Galileo supposedly dropped a one-pound and a ten-pound ball simultaneously from the top, and they landed together, overturning Aristotle on the spot — later historians mostly believe this scene never really happened, and that Galileo reached the law of free fall mainly through inclined-plane and thought experiments. But the legend's choice of the Leaning Tower is no accident: Pisa is Galileo's birthplace, and the tower leans with such conviction that it perfectly suits a story about challenging authority. The tilt itself is the true epic: work began in 1173, and by the third storey the soft clay and groundwater beneath the foundations had started the tower leaning south. For the next two centuries Pisa was at war, on and off, with Genoa and Lucca, and construction kept stopping — paradoxically, it was precisely that century of pause that let the foundation soil consolidate; built in one go, the tower would long since have fallen. Later builders tried to "over-correct", compensating northward in the upper storeys, so the shaft curves in a slight banana shape. The lean accelerated in the 20th century; the tower closed in 1990, and an international expert team, using soil extraction (carefully removing 38 tonnes of earth from beneath the north side of the foundations), brought it back by about 38 centimetres, returning the angle of tilt from 5.5 degrees to about 3.97 degrees — much as it stood in the 1830s — and experts assess it will remain stable for at least another 200 years. Since the reopening in 2001, every visitor's "holding up the tower" photograph is a souvenir of that eight-hundred-year rescue.
Source: Leaning Tower of Pisa official website; UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Piazza del Duomo, Pisa; Wikipedia: Leaning Tower of Pisa
History
History of Leaning Tower of Pisa
The Leaning Tower is the freestanding bell tower of Pisa Cathedral, standing on the Piazza dei Miracoli with the cathedral, baptistery and monumental cemetery as the masterworks of Pisan Romanesque architecture. Its foundation stone was laid on 9 August 1173, traditionally credited to the architect Bonanno Pisano; by 1178, at the third storey, the tilt had appeared; around 1272 Giovanni di Simone resumed the work, deliberately compensating in the opposite direction, and the bell chamber was completed in 1372. The tower is about 57 metres high (about 55.9 metres on the low side, 56.7 on the high side), has 8 storeys, and the bell chamber hangs 7 bells tuned to the musical scale. In 1987 the Piazza dei Miracoli was inscribed on the World Heritage List. The cathedral complex was a product of the maritime Republic of Pisa at its height — part of its funding came from the naval plunder of Palermo in 1063.
Source: Leaning Tower of Pisa official website; UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Piazza del Duomo, Pisa; Wikipedia: Leaning Tower of Pisa
Culture
Culture & customs
Background
The Leaning Tower is one of Italy's most deeply rooted national symbols, and a cultural parable of "a flaw makes a classic": its aesthetic value (the white-marble Romanesque arcades) and its engineering lesson (foundation treatment) are equally written into the textbooks. The square's four-part set (cathedral, baptistery, bell tower, cemetery) corresponds to the four stations of life — birth (baptism), life and faith (cathedral, bell tower), death (cemetery) — the cosmic scheme of the medieval Pisans.
Local customs
- Striking the "hand holding up the tower" forced-perspective pose on the lawn is now a collective ritual of visitors worldwide
- before 8 in the morning the square is emptiest and the light most raking. Locals, by contrast, prize the acoustic miracle of the neighbouring baptistery: every half hour staff sing beneath the dome, and the echo circles the beams for several seconds. On the eve of the feast of San Ranieri, 16 June, Pisa also holds the Luminara candle festival along both banks of the Arno, followed the next day by a historic regatta.
Religion & beliefs
- The tower is the bell tower of the Catholic Archdiocese of Pisa, and its cathedral is an active place of worship (Masses are held normally
- visitors should dress appropriately and keep quiet)
- the Piazza dei Miracoli as a whole is a religious architectural complex, and climbing and visiting carry no restriction by religious identity.
Etiquette & taboos
Etiquette & taboos
Rules that apply here
Rome's Spanish Steps: no sitting, eating or drinking
Do
- Walk up the steps and keep moving after your photo
Don’t
- Sitting, resting, eating or drinking on the steps
Banned by Rome's urban police regulations since 2019; media report fines of €250, rising to €400 for dirtying or damaging the steps.
Verified Oct 19, 2026Source: ANSA: Rome bans sitting on the Spanish Steps (2019)
Don’t DON'T
- Do not step on the closed lawns or climb the tower-base railings and any building plinths
- no bags of any kind or selfie sticks are allowed on the climb (they must pass security and be checked), and do not lean out over the railings at the top
- during Mass in the cathedral do not wander about sightseeing, and do not talk loudly or dress revealingly in religious places
Locals appreciate DO
- Book your tower-climb slot in advance on the official website (opapisa.it) and arrange the cathedral visit within the same outing (the cathedral is free but requires a timed ticket)
- when climbing, hold the rail with both hands and walk slowly — the steps spiral and tilt, and the way down is more slippery than the way up
- visitors with a fear of heights can hold the rail and enjoy the view from the bell-chamber platform
- take your holding-the-tower photos in the designated lawn areas and leave promptly afterwards, without picnicking or lingering on the grass
Plan your visit
Practical info
Travel tips
- Climbing the tower is by strictly timed reservation in small batches (roughly one group every 40 minutes)
- you must buy tickets on the official website in advance and arrive before the time printed on the ticket
- children under 8 are not allowed to climb, and those aged 8–18 must be accompanied hand-in-hand by an adult
- Before climbing, all bags (including small waist packs) must be left at the free cloakroom
- only a phone and camera may be carried
- there are 251 steps (counts to the bell-chamber platform vary slightly), and the marble steps have been worn tilted and slippery by eight centuries of feet
- The lawns of the Piazza dei Miracoli are divided: only designated areas may be stepped on for photographs — the rest of the grass is off-limits and staff will intervene
- Tower opening hours are adjusted by season (about 9:00–20:00 in summer, about 10:00–17:00 in winter) — see the official website
- the climb ticket is about €20 (often sold as a tower + cathedral combination), and the official site opapisa.it releases tickets 45 days ahead, which vanish in seconds in high season. Location: the northern edge of Pisa's old town, about a 25-minute walk from Pisa Centrale station, or the LAM Rossa bus to the Torre stop. Suggested duration: 40 minutes for the climb plus 2 hours for the square's four-part set
- it can be combined with Lucca or Florence as a same-day return trip.
Eat nearby
What to eat nearby
Must-try
- Pisa's traditional chickpea flatbread
Pisa's traditional chickpea flatbread (cecina, baked in a wood oven and scattered with black pepper — served with aubergine sauce in the local way); Tuscan tomato bread soup (pappa al pomodoro); wide pasta with wild-boar ragù (pappardelle al cinghiale); and for dessert, a Pisan almond biscuit with a glass of white wine from the Arno valley
| Where to eat | Restaurants around the Piazza dei Miracoli lean on tourist menus; walk 10 minutes back into the old-town centre (the Borgo Stretto arcaded street and the area around Piazza dei Cavalieri), the food streets of this university city, crowded with students and professors |
|---|---|
| Dining etiquette | Cecina must be eaten hot; the shop will ask whether you want it with aubergine (con la melanzana) or folded into a small round loaf (focaccina); the Italian lunch only gets lively after 12:30 — arrive too early and only the coffee bars are open |
| Typical price per person | Old-town trattorias €13–22 per person, roughly RMB 100–170; square-side seats with a view start at €25 per person (reference prices, estimated at €1 ≈ RMB 7.8) |
| Tips | Walking from the station to the square takes you along the full pedestrian high street Corso Italia, with plenty of eating and drinking on the way; evening climbs are emptier with softer light, and for holding-the-tower photos the morning front light is best (the tower faces south-east, so the front is lit in the morning) |
Prices are typical rates as of October 2026, not exact quotes; CNY equivalents are approximate where exchange rates fluctuate.
Photos
Photos
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PaestumPaestum · CC BY 4.0
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FaceMePLS from The Hague, The Netherlands · CC BY 2.0
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