Monday, November 3, 2008

Pisa! (and Lucca)



The famous leaning tower, the only thing anyone ever sees in Pisa.














This is actually the only asymmetrical facade of a Romanesque Church in all of Europe.  The church itself is symmetrical on the inside but the facade sticks out farther and runs into the tower.  According to our program director while the church was smaller the tower was built by some family.  When the church wanted to expand they started the expansion before acquiring all of the properties around it and this one family held out.  Expansions took awhile in the 1500's so the church expanded everything and thought that they could convince the family to give up the tower by the time the facade would be added.  Unfortunately this didn't happen and the money doesn't always stick around for a long time, so they built the facade anyways.  The art historian guiding us seems to think this is improbable but he has no better answer.  (This church is actually in Lucca, why can't blogspot open up photos in the order I tell it too?)






























So we played tourist.  Better than playing tourist is watching everyone else do so.  Especially when its from a different point of view than their camera person.   I should have some shots from my film camera, have to develop that roll still though.  















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