Coming last of all to the greatest wonder of the Piazza, it is really with surprise you find the Campanile so beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful tower of Italy.  It is like a lily leaning in the wind, it is like the slanting horn of an unicorn, it is like an ivory Madonna that the artist has not had the heart to carve since the ivory was so fair.  Begun in 1174, it was designed by Bonannus.  He made it all of white marble, which has faded now to the colour of old ivory.  Far away at the top of the tower live the great bells, and especially La Pasquareccia,[61] founded in 1262, stamped with a relief of the Annunciation, for it used to ring the Ave.  I think there can be no reasonable doubt that the lean of the Tower is due to some terrible accident which befell it after the third gallery had been built, for the fourth gallery, added in 1204 by Benenabo, begins to rectify the sinking; the rest, built in 1260, continues to throw the weight from the lower to the higher side.  As we know, the whole Piazza was a marsh, and just as the foundations of the Tower of S. Niccolo have given a little, so these sank much earlier, offering an unique opportunity to a barbarian architect.  There is, as has been often very rightly said, no such thing as a freak in Italian art:  its aim was beauty, very simple and direct; nowhere in all its history will you find a grotesque such as this.  It is strange that a northerner, William of Innspruck, finished the Tower the fifth storey in 1260; and it may well be that this Teuton brought to the work something of a natural delight in such a thing as this, and contrived to finish it, instead of beginning again.  It seems necessary to add that the tower would be more beautiful if it were perfectly upright.

The Piazza del Duomo is full of interest.  Almost opposite the Campanile, at the corner of the Via S. Maria, is the Casa dei Trovatelli.  It was here, as I suppose,[62] that the Pisans built that hospital and chapel to S. Giorgio after the great day of Montecatini.[63] Not far away, behind the Via Torelli in Via Arcevescovado, is the archbishop’s palace, with a fine courtyard.  If we follow the Via Torelli a little, we pass, on the right, the Oratory of S. Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa, where there is a crucifix by Giunta Pisano which used to hang in the kitchen of the Convent of S. Anna,[64] not far away, where Emilia Viviani was “incarcerated,” as Shelley says.  Close by are the few remains of the Baths of Hadrian.  At the corner we pass into Via S. Anna, and then, taking the first turning to the left, we come into the great Piazza di S. Caterina, before the church of that name.  Built in the thirteenth century, it has a fine Pisan facade, but the church is now closed and the convent has become a boys’ school.  Passing through the shady Piazza under the plane-trees, we come into the Via S. Lorenzo, and then, turning to the right into Vicolo del Ruschi, we come into a Piazza out of which opens the Piazza di S. Francesco.  S. Francesco fell on evil days, and was altogether desecrated, but is now in the hands of the Franciscans again.  This is well, for the whole church, founded in 1211, and not the Campanile only, is said to be by Niccolo Pisano.[65] Behind it, in the old convent, is the Museo.