PIAZZA DEI MIRACOLI, Camposanto Presentation

If you look at it from the outside, Camposanto, or the Cemetery, that's on the north side is perhaps the least spectacular monument in Piazza dei Miracoli. In fact the façade facing the Cathedral and the Baptistery is a simple but elegant marble wall with a row of blind arches at the bottom. But it is inside that you'll discover the extraordinary beauty of this monumental cemetery which you enter from a portal surmounted by a tabernacle with Gothic statues.

In chronological order, this was the last building erected in the square. The Cemetery is rectangular and resembles a cloister. According to legend, the central space of the Cemetery preserves soil from the hill of Mount Calvary in the Holy Land, where Jesus Christ was crucified, which was brought here by some Pisan ships involved in the crusades. Apparently, the Cemetery was built to gather the myriad of tombs that had multiplied in the area around the Cathedral over time. Archbishop Federico Visconti promoted the initiative. Its construction began in the second half of the 1200s and ended in the following century when the beautiful, pointed, perforated arches in a typical Floral Gothic style were made; you can see them surrounding the great central space.

In the beginning the sarcophagi of the most illustrious citizens were placed in this uncovered space, including the rectors and professors of the prestigious University as well as members of important local families, while lesser figures were buried in the vast side corridors....