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The name "Square of Miracles” was created by the Italian writer and poet Gabriele d'Annunzio

Partly paved and partly grassed, Campo dei Miracoli is dominated by four great religious edifices: the Duomo, the Leaning Tower (the cathedral's campanile), the Baptistery and the Camposanto.

In 1987 the whole square was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The power of Pisa as a mighty maritime nation began to grow and reached its apex in the 11th century when it acquired traditional fame as one of the four main historical Maritime Republics of Italy (Repubbliche Marinare).

Pisa was in continuous conflict with the Saracens, who had their bases in Corsica, for control of the Mediterranean. Between 1030 and 1035, Pisa went on to successfully defeat several rival towns in Sicily and conquer Carthage in North Africa

In 1051–1052 the admiral Jacopo Ciurini conquered Corsica, provoking more resentment from the Genovese.

In 1063 admiral Giovanni Orlando, coming to the aid of the Norman Roger I, took Palermo from the Saracen pirates.

The gold treasure taken from the Saracens in Palermo allowed the Pisans to start the building of their cathedral and the other monuments which constitute the famous Piazza del Duomo

Architects began building this most famous of medieval campaniles in 1173, but work stopped abruptly five years later when they first noticed a pronounced lean to the north.

This was caused by a weak foundation constructed on top of silty, unstable soil from a former estuary. Only three stories had gone up when they halted construction.

In 1250 when work resumed, architects began trying to adjust the lean. Their effort caused the Tower to have a slight banana shape by the time they reached the eighth and final story as the campanile stayed more or less vertical at about the fifth floor.

By 1272, the tower began leaning toward the south. Before they constructed the bell tower in 1350, architects actually tried to angle the top of the tower back toward the north by adding four steps on the north side and six steps on the south side at the base of the bell tower, that was what gave the Tower an ever-so-slight S shape.

For centuries, many have offered solutions to how to right the tower. In 1934, engineers working for Italian leader Benito Mussolini, who considered the flawed tower antithetical to Fascist ideals, tried to right it by injecting almost 200 tons of cement into the base. The "fix" actually added a tenth of a degree to the tilt.

In the 1950s, officials silenced the seven bells, the largest of which weighs three and a half tons, for fear their vibrations could trigger a collapse.

And in 1990, at a time when 700,000 annual visitors were ascending the campanile and the lean increased by one-20th of an inch every year, officials closed Pisa's famous Torre Pendente to the public

Since then, many experts have tried numerous methods to right or at least halt the lean of the 56m tower, whose top today lies 4,67m south of the base. Sophisticated monitors were installed, which can detect movements at the campanile's apex to within four-ten-thousandths of an inch. These instruments pick up the tower's daily sway of about one-hundredth of an inch, which is caused by the temperature of the sun-facing south side rising by day and falling at night.

The device also picked up a frightening overnight increase in the lean, in what committee members recall as "Black September." On September 6th, 1995, after engineers had added 600 tons of lead ingots to the north side to counteract the southward tilt, the tower jumped one-sixteenth of an inch to the south. In tower terms, that's a lot, and some feared the tower would topple imminently. Within 24 hours, engineers began adding an additional 230 tons of lead, and the movement stopped.

After a decade of corrective reconstruction and stabilization efforts, the tower was reopened to the public on December 15, 2001, and was declared stable for at least another 300 years. 

 In May 2008, after the removal of another 70 metric tons (77 short tons) of earth, engineers announced that the Tower had been stabilized such that it had stopped moving for the first time in its history. They stated it would be stable for at least 200 years

The museum of the Cathedral Vestry Board The museum contains works which used to adorn the monuments of the Piazza dei Miracoli and which, mainly for safety reasons, had been moved to the warehouses of the Cathedral Vestry Board. It was set up in 1986 in a specially restored building, between Piazza dell' Arcivescovado and Piazza del Duomo

Medieval statues in the Museo del Duomo of Pisa

A detail from the 12th century bronze doors that once graced the cathedral.

Sound: Celine Dion, Andreea Bocelli – The prayer

Pictures: Daniela Iacob

Arangement: Sanda Foişoreanu