The Cathedral of Pisa

The group of the Leaning Tower, the Cathedral, the Baptistery, and the Campo Santo of Pisa--each exalting each--are among the most remarkable buildings in the world. They are all of the same white marble as the Tower, and cream-tinted with age. Pisa was, in the eleventh century, what Venice became much later, the bulwark of Christendom against Moslems. The Cathedral is a votive offering by the citizens. After the great naval victory near Palermo (1063), in which they captured and brought home six vessels laden with rich merchandise, it was agreed by unanimous vote to devote the booty to the building of a cathedral, which should surpass all others and be at once a thank-offering to heaven and a monument to their country's honor. The first stone was laid in 1063--the noble building was consecrated in 1118. The interior is 311 feet in length and 237 feet wide at the transepts. The nave has five aisles; the pillars of the central aisle were brought from the islands of Elba and Gigho;--those at the sides were collected from more ancient buildings. One hundred windows, chiefly stained glass, cast "a dim religious light" through the solemn colonnades. In the middle of the Cathedral hangs a beautiful bronze lamp, called Galileo's Lamp because, it is stated, the swaying of this lamp suggested to him the movement of the pendulum. The Cathedral, like the Tower, has a perceptible inclination. Ruskin draws attention to the leaning of the facade. He says ("Lamp of Life"):

"The whole west front literally overhangs (I have not plumbed it, but the inclination may be seen by the eye by bringing it into visual contact with the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo), and a most extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the southern wall shows that the inclination had begun when the first story was built."

Another author calls attention to the deviation of horizontal lines:

"It will be seen that the dark stripes of the wall (dark green marble), although broken abruptly downward at the fifth arch from the western front, still enter its corner pillar at right angles; thus their change of direction will at once mark and measure its inclination, the deviation from horizontality which these obtuse angles indicate, being an index of the deviation of the pillar from the perpendicular." "The architects began their corner pillars with a wedge-shaped base. The succession of dark stripes entering the pillar at right angles to its rising line marks the fact that they continued it with rectangular blocks. The resulting inclination was therefore intended."

This seems conclusive evidence that the architects had a fixed purpose in these irregularities, and the effect is to make the Cathedral appear larger than it is, and also to add what Ruskin calls "Life" to the whole building. The same author quoted says: "It makes the whole building vibrate in an architectural illusion. On me the Pisa Cathedral as seen from the Lucca railroad had the effect of a ship under full sail."