Cattedrale di Pisa

This guide to the Cattedrale di Pisa follows a nineteen-year-old Galileo Galilei, bored during Mass in fifteen eighty-three, timing a swinging bronze lamp against his own pulse, an observation later credited with inspiring the pendulum clock. It also traces the cathedral's own history: architect Buscheto raising it from ten sixty-three on plunder from a naval campaign in Sicily, its bronze doors remade after fire destroyed the originals in fifteen ninety-five. Historians have questioned whether the lamp overhead today is even the one Galileo watched. Look up at it as you enter and judge the story for yourself.