PIAZZA DEI MIRACOLI, Cathedral Interior

Welcome to the interior of Pisa's Cathedral, with its five naves divided by rows of Corinthian columns. The two loggias you see at the upper part of the naves are known as matroneums, or women's galleries, and are decorated by double-arch windows divided by pillars that take up and continue the momentum of the underlying columns.

At the end of the 16th century there was a severe fire in the Cathedral that you can still see traces of today. The interior furnishings belong to the time just after the fire, such as the rich golden wood ceiling or the 17th-century holy water fonts at the entrance to the naves.

After the fire the Cathedral's most important work of art, a 14th-century masterpiece pulpit by Giovanni Pisano, was dismantled. Fortunately, it was put back together at the end of the central nave in the 1920s. This pulpit was made to substitute a previous one that had been dismantled and sent to Cagliari, where it still remains today. For many years, its creator Giovanni Pisano had collaborated with his father Nicola, an absolute genius of 13th-century sculpture; you'll soon see his pulpit inside the Baptistery.

For both his temperament and expressive choice, Giovanni was more inclined to Gothic style, which at the time was a novelty coming from France. Thanks to the game he plays with light and shadow in his sculptures, everything seems to be in motion: figures, feelings, and expressions. You can recognize the style both in the big figures supporting the pulpit and in the balustrade's panels depicting scenes filled with characters....