Places to see in Pisa & Lucca

The cathedral's free-standing bell tower, leaning since it was built because the ground beneath one side is soft. Climbing it is ticketed, timed and capped, and the tilt is genuinely disorienting on the stairs. Everything around it — cathedral, baptistery, walled cemetery — is on the same lawn and is the better half of the visit.

Where the cathedral complex keeps the original sculpture taken indoors out of the weather, including Giovanni Pisano's carving. Quiet, small, and the place to understand what the buildings outside actually carry. An hour, and it has a cloister view of the tower most visitors never find.

The largest baptistery in Italy, round and domed, and famous for an acoustic that custodians demonstrate by singing a note and letting it hang in the air for seconds. Worth timing your visit to catch one. On the same ticket as the rest of the cathedral complex.

Pisa's other square, five minutes from the tower and almost empty by comparison — Vasari's sgraffito facades and the university that Galileo attended. The reminder that Pisa is a working city with a life beyond one lawn. Ten minutes, on the walk between the tower and the river.