I
To enter Pisa by the Porta Nuova, coming at once into the Piazza del
Duomo, is as though at midday, on the highway, one had turned aside into
a secret meadow full of a strange silence and dazzling light, where have
been abandoned among the wild flowers the statues of the gods. For the
Piazza is just that--a meadow scattered with daisies, among which, as
though forgotten, stand unbroken a Cathedral, a Baptistery, a Tower, and
a Cemetery, all of marble, separate and yet one in the consummate beauty
of their grouping. And as though weary of the silence and the light, the
tower has leaned towards the flowers, which may fade and pass away. So
amid the desolation of the Acropolis must the statues of the Parthenon
have looked from the hills and the sea, with something of this abandoned
splendour, this dazzling solitude, this mysterious calm silence,
satisfied and serene.
Wherever you may be in Pisa, you cannot escape from the mysterious
influence of those marvellous ghosts that haunt the verge of the city,
that corner apart where the wind is white on the grass, and the shadows
steal slowly through the day. The life of the world is far away on the
other side of the city; here is only beauty and peace.
If you come into the Piazza, as most travellers do, from the Lung' Arno,
as you turn into the Via S. Maria or out of the Borgo into the beautiful
Piazza dei Cavalieri, gradually as you pass on your way life hesitates
and at last deserts you. In the Via S. Maria, for instance, that winds
like a stream from the Duomo towards Arno, at first all is gay with the
memory and noise of the river, the dance of the sun and the wind. Then
you pass a church; some shadow seems to glide across the way, and it is
almost in dismay you glance up at the silent palaces, the colour of
pearl, barred and empty; and then looking down see the great paved way
where your footsteps make an echo; while there amid the great slabs of
granite the grass is peeping. It is generally out of such a shadowy
street as this that one comes into the dazzling Piazza del Duomo. But
indeed, all Pisa is like that. You pass from church to church, from one
deserted Piazza to another, and everywhere you disturb some shadow, some
silence is broken, some secret seems to be hid. The presence of those
marvellous abandoned things in the far corner of the city is felt in
every byway, in every alley, in every forgotten court. "Amid the
desolation of a city" this splendour is immortal, this glory is not
dead.