Forced Perspective and Other Mishaps at Pisa

I will start off by saying this is our 6th semester at KSU. And us architecture students are some of the smartest in the University. (Apologies to those incredibly intelligent people at Kent not in architecture. I mean no offense.) But many of us, including myself were able to load up on Tuesday Thursday classes, leaving Wednesday empty. So last Wednesday, a bunch of us decided to take the train to Pisa.

Pisa is near the coast, but still in the same region (Toscana) as Firenze. So the train ride was relatively quick. Pisa will also be where we catch most of our flights to other places... But we got off the train at the station and followed one main road north, crossed the Arno river (Same river as Firenze). We kept going until we hit these ruins..

Then we headed west and then the main attraction revealed itself!

This one column on the leaning tower is different from all the other standard Corinthian ones. I will interpret it as the architect and the structural engineer freaking out that the tower wasn't staying upright. And the troll in the middle, who caused it all to lean is all like "U mad, bro"

Just a side note. I can confirm that the tower is indeed leaning.

But there was also a cathedral and baptistery!

And that is when we all started doing our duty as a visitor to Pisa, set up silly forced perspective photos with the tower.

Unfortunately people kept getting in my way. I got reallllllyyy angry so in a burst of rage I went and punched the tower. I hit it so hard that the tower is now permanently leaning....

I kept this mini version as a souvenir.

Aaron also had a mini leaning tower to take home.

Megan Theresa, and Pam setting up a photo.

Baptistery, Cathedral, Tower.

Megan got the photo that worked. Between the six people in our group, we probably got most photos with the tower that one can think of.

Keeping it simple. Pushin' it over.

If you note, the cathedral is also getting into the leaning act. On the side, towards the front, it appears the marble stripes are not aligned correctly and skew towards the ground.

Next, we all started climbing on the posts of the chain fence. Forrest in the balancing act.

Can one of us split them?

We decided to go into the baptistery. It was a pretty cool cylindrical space.

Through this stair in the outside wall, we could go up to the second level.

Window view to the town.

The place was fairly big. Everyone looked pretty small on the other side.

We got to hear this twice. A worker here would stand in the middle, and sing notes up into the dome. Reverberation time in here was about 8 seconds. A person could change notes quickly and a chord would ring. The sound was heavenly.

At this point, the batteries in my camera were done. I brought six with me, none were good. I kept swapping them out and scheming a bunch more pictures out of them.

We sat on the side, just to enjoy the inside of the baptistery.

Then we walked over to the cathedral. This is a detail in one of the doors. I particularly enjoyed the 3 dimensionality of it.

Back in architecture history, we were taught 5 aisle plans meant it was important. That was the case here, The clerestory windows on the marble and gold colored roof, made for a beautiful effect.

In the apse half dome was a large image of Christ.

Looking up to the dome. The way these things were painted, to be viewed from below was pretty amazing.

Looking up and back at details in the cathedral.

In the south transept, there was this. A tomb with glass to see the inside. Quite strange...

I forget what it was called, but there was a building to the north of the cathedral, which had along inner courtyard. the hall around, had tombs all over the floor. and statues and other artwork all around.

Buh bye leaning tower!

I noticed this building was also getting into the leaning act, lopsidedly skewed.

I managed to get this picture of the river, right before my camera's batteries were completely done. We stopped at a cheap greasy pizza place. (Gotta have Pizza in Pisa!) Then we made our way back to the train station.