Say ‘Pisa’ and everyone thinks of the Leaning Tower. Fair enough; it’s a curiosity, and the tourist board must be pleased that Mussolini’s plan to straighten it came to nothing. It stands, or leans, next to the cathedral in the Piazza dei Miracoli, and beyond the cathedral is the Baptistry, one of the most beautiful buildings in Italy.
I was in Pisa for the annual book festival, which attracts an extraordinary number of independent publishers and huge audiences (25,000 over a long weekend). Each year the director, Lucia della Porta, invites a foreign delegation, and this was Scotland’s turn. We were housed in the Royal Victoria Hotel, which dates from 1839, established with foresight to cater for middle-class tourists not rich enough, or staying long enough, to take a floor in a palazzo, unlike Byron and Shelley who both spent some months in Pisa (cheaper for the Shelleys than Florence) a few years earlier.
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