The name Pisa immediately brings to mind the towns’ most famous monument – the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Most tourists feast their eyes and time on the tower and its neighboring architectural wonders on Campo dei Miracoli square, and few go beyond the grassy square where it stands.

Pisa is another of the ancient cities of Italy going back to about a thousand BC. It came to the notice of history when the Romans expanded it into a Naval trading port nearly a thousand years later. By the eleventh century, Pisa had become one of the country’s most influential maritime republics, along with Venice, Amalfi, and Genoa. It had a vibrant commercial contact with the countries of the Middle East and this  helped the people of Pisa to absorb the advanced Arabic ideas (decorative and scientific), and its wars with the Saracens led it to create an offshore empire of Corsica, Sardegna, and the Balearics. It defeated Amalfi in 1135 and amassed a load of wealth in the late Middle Ages, and with this it created its own monumental buildings. All this ended in 1284 when Pisa's battle fleet was destroyed by Genoa at Meloria, a overwhelming defeat allowing the Genoese to take control of the Tyrrhenian Sea and forcing Pisa's long downhill slide. Its Ghibelline character gave Florence the excuse it needed to take control in 1406. There were some minor rebellions but in the main, Florence stayed in power until Italian unification in the 1860s. 

Besides its Leaning tower and history as a Naval power, it is also renowned for its University, an old one, that was established in 1343 and was always famous for its proficiency. Pisa’s most famous son was Galileo Galilei the great physicist and astronomer.