The Travel Bug's 3 Fascinating Facts About Pisa

Mum....why so squint?? 

TTB is on holiday again!   This time, he took his humans to the beautiful Tuscan city of Pisa to eat pizza, work out how that building is squint and, generally, have a good look around.

These are the fascinating facts he uncovered about Pisa:

• TTB thought it would be weird if he DIDN'T mention that the Tower of Pisa, which was built as a bell tower for the Duomo in the Square of Miracles in the city centre.  The Tower was already leaning when it was first presented to the public is 1372.     The building continued to tilt until the 1990's when a major project was undertaken to stop the building crashing down.     Workers moved almost 70 tonnes of earth from beneath the tower, thus reducing the tilt by almost 45cm.     Because of this, TTB has decided it should be named The Slightly Less Leaning Tower of Pisa.   That's bound to become a thing, right?

• Pisa was the city of world renowned scientist, Galileo Galilei   The city's airport bears him name.    Galileo, amongst numerous other incredible achievements, was the man to discover that the surface of the moon was no, as previously suspected, flat; but rather rough.   He also wrote of the rings around Saturn and confirmed that Venus has similar phases to the movement of the Moon.    TTB has absolutely no idea what any of this means, but thinks that Galileo was obviously a very smart human.

• Pisa is home to Europe's first and oldest University Botanic Gardens.  Orto botanic di Pisa was established in 1544!  

TTB x