Piazza del Duomo with the Santa Maria Maggiore Cathedral owes its artistic name to Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose novel Chissà che sì, chissà che no published in 1910 thus renamed Romanesque Europe's largest architectural complex for its eccentricities.
The Cathedral with its lay bell tower (the leaning tower), the Baptistery and the Cemetery stand on an immense green lawn. The symbolic importance of these urban jewels is intentionally clear, since they represent man's entire historical vital cycle, from birth to death. But there is more to it. The buildings are laid out to form the constellation of Aries. However, this was not dictated by superstition; it was rather the rational instinct that led builders to raise their heads to question the skies where doctrines merged.

The Cathedral, built along the Romanesque Pisan style, became a model for all churches in Central Italy due to the unusually rich ornamental motifs and the horizontal marble strips borrowed from Arab, Byzantine and Levantine cultures - an exotic touch Tuscan art acquired elsewhere through the international presence of Pisan merchants (the Chinzica District, rich in shops and markets, was once the site of Arab and Jewish merchants). The internal dilated spatial effect also recalls that of Muslim mosques.

Inside the Cathedral you will find sculptures by the unrivalled 13th century masters and sculptors Nicola and Giovanni Pisano.
Giovanni produced the pulpit, which is famous because it is one of the richest and most extensive 14th century narrations of the life of Christ and, because for the first time panels are slightly curved to give the pulpit a new circular dimension.
The most skilled artists cooperated in the Cathedral's decorations. Cimabue's last work, an immense mosaic depicting St. John the Evangelist, was produced here. Along with the pulpit, it escaped the terrible fire that destroyed the Cathedral in 1595.

Another equally beautiful pulpit called Pergamo was made by Nicola Pisano for the Baptistery, a circular sacred building with complex external ornaments, sober internal elegance, white marble wall facing and mosaic floor. The baptistery's other artistic treasures have been placed in the neighbouring National Cathedral Museum.

Situated in the namesake square, the museum prides in an extensive collection of ceramic items and sculptures that have been mostly taken from churches in Pisa. The pictorial collection, which numbers works by Donatello, Gentile da Fabriano, Masaccio and Beato Angelico, is remarkable.

Pisa is a very ancient city of Etruscan-Roman origin with a very high density of young inhabitants. Besides the prestigious University, the provincial capital is the site of the Scuola Normale, where nothing is normal. The Normale offers its students, who are admitted by competition and enrolled in a faculty of the city's university, board and lodging, a refund on university taxes and a monthly grant to purchase didactic material. Students can also self-manage a common fund to organise both cultural and recreational activities. The special feature is that the student comes immediately in contact with key figures in the world of scientific research, philosophy and literature.
Founded in 1810 by Napoleonic decree in Palazzo della Carovana, the Scuola Normale's annals record Nobel Prize winners like Enrico Fermi, Carlo Rubbia, Giosuè Carducci (the first Italian Nobel Prize winner in 1906), leading politicians, like Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Alessandro Natta and Massimo D’Alema, editors-in-chief and authors, like Giulio Bollati, Pietro Citati and Antonio Tabucchi.

Crossed by the Arno for 16 km from east to west, Pisa is furnished with many bridges built through the ages. The oldest is Ponte del Mezzo: built after the war, it crosses the river with a suggestive arcade. Every summer it witnesses the Gioco del ponte, a lively 15th century folk tournament.
Ponte delle Bocchette (700 m long) was built in 1986. 1974 witnessed the construction of the obstinate technical devices for the 109 m Solforino bridge, which is neuralgic for the city's traffic. Built in 1875 in memory of Napoleon III's victory on Francis Joseph, the bridge was bombed in 1944. The natives of Pisa rebuilt it, but it gave way during the Arno's floods in 1966. Genius and engineering rules… the bridge still does its duty.
The city's cross and delight, the river endows Pisa with quiet river banks lined by luxuriant vegetation and magnificent palaces, numbering the 16th century Palazzo Medici (current Prefecture) and Palazzo Toscanelli (the current Public Records Office).

The city is dotted with shops and stalls where you can purchase finely crafted items made of alabaster, marble, copper and leather.

Delicious breaks in places serving either inexpensive menus or unforgettable lunches and dinners are a real frequent, savoury and unique temptation in Pisa.
The real "crime" would be to leave the city without tasting arsella alla pisana, shellfish served on slices of Tuscan bread, anguillette cieche alla pisana, stoccafisso alla pisana, anguilla in ginocchioni (flavoured with sage), spaghetti schiacciati with fish sauce, zuppa ai ranocchi, fish soup, soup with San Michele white beans and, cake with bischeri. Second courses climax with game and fish, like stoccafisso alla pisana (Pisa is only 10 km from the Tyrrhenian coast).

Chianti and Montecarlo D.O.C. wines head the wine lists, but excellent dry white wines (i.e. Sangiovese) with a floral fragrance and fruity full bodied red wines are many and less expensive.

Pisa is irresistibly egocentric even when it comes to confectionery: besides the famous chiacchiere, zuccherini di Carnevale, classical almond cantuccio and the less known Easter stiacciata, the city prides in a sweet, whose DNA is unmistakably typical of Pisa. It is called Kinzica, after a 15th century princess who foiled a Saracen raid. In her honour you can taste a soft round sweet thickly studded with biological pine kernels from the neighbouring natural park Migliarino San Rossore and Massacciuoli.
Shake off all feelings of guilt - the walks will help you slim down; besides, Pisa has always challenged the law of gravity.