Church of Saint Mary of the Thorn

This guide to the Church of Saint Mary of the Thorn in Pisa follows an engineering puzzle from eighteen seventy-one: after six centuries of flooding from the Arno, architect Vincenzo Micheli's team dismantled the entire Gothic facade, carving by carving, to rebuild it a meter higher. It traces which sculptures were trusted to the move and which were swapped for copies, and the thirteen years the work took before finishing in eighteen eighty-four. It also brings in the critic John Ruskin, who saw the results and was furious. Look at the facade's pinnacles and rose window for the seams between old stone and newer copy.