Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta
Piazza del Duomo
56126 – Pisa –
Phone: 050 3872211 / 212
Fax: 050 560505
Hours: Winter 10:00 to 12:45 / 15:00 to 16:45 (weekdays), 15:00 to 16:45 (holidays), spring / summer / fall 8:00 to 20:00.
Schedule of Masses: 8.00-9.30-11.00-12.10-18.00 (Sundays and holidays), 8.00-9.00-9.30 (weekdays).
Admission: 2.00.
Directions: From the railway station or shuttle bus No. 3 A.
In the moment of greatest prestige and power of Pisa, the city is experiencing rapid growth, would raise his most important church, crowned by the Campanile, the Baptistery and the Campo Santo: the architecture and harmony of the four buildings were not the result of a single mind, but the result of the work of the most brilliant architects who lent their art in different periods. Reinterpreting the geometry of classical Islamic art, and recovering, they invented a new style: Romanesque. This great anticipation of the Florentine Renaissance also found in the figurative artists of absolute value such as Nicola and his son John, who influenced artists such as Brunelleschi, Donatello and Michelangelo himself. Was chosen as a venue capable of accommodating the Cathedral of the city, an open space outside the walls of the oldest, after the victorious expedition of Palermo year 1063, it said beginning the work, under the direction of Buscheto. In his view, the Cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, should have gathered around the great dome of the architectural movement of the whole of the sacred building, one hundred years later, another great architect, Rainald, conceived and directed the ‘ elongation of the three bays, ending a magnificent facade and raising the aisle until the completion of the cathedral, unique and grandiose as it sees today.