Abbreviation for Pisa, Italy

Pisa

Few cities in the world are as based around one world-famous attraction as Pisa. Most tourists who arrive in the city get along the Leaning Tower and travel on without giving the rest of Pisa a chance.

It’s a shame and shame, because Pisa has much else to offer. And moreover, the city is excellent as a starting point for discovering more of Italy.

Pisa is centrally located in one of Italy’s most beautiful regions, Tuscany, giving you easy access to other tourist destinations such as Cinque Terre and Florence. We also throw in day trips to Siena and Lucca, cities that are definitely worth a visit.

The white, grand marble buildings of one of Europe’s finest squares, Campo dei Miracoli, surrounded by a maze of meandering cobbled streets from the Middle Ages, are also a draw in their own right.

Pisa welcomes all types of tourists, and both the city and the region have something to offer every visitor.

Get to know Pisa

Pisa is located in the Tuscany region of Italy, a few kilometers from Italy’s west coast of the Ligurian Sea, part of the Mediterranean. The town is based around the river Arno and is located approx. 250 kilometers northwest of Rome.

Pisa is a very old city, and there is uncertainty about who founded the city and when. Pisa is already mentioned in ancient Roman writings as an ancient city, possibly as early as 1300 BC. In the Middle Ages, Pisa was one of the maritime powers of the Mediterranean, and an important trading center.

Pisa, a medium-sized Italian city, with around 91,000 inhabitants, (2015). The city center itself is very easy to orientate in. It is largely bordered by its old city walls on three sides, and bounded by the railway lines to the south.

The Arno River, which you probably know from Florence, also divides the center into a northern and a southern part with an arc that swings north before turning south again. Several bridges cross Arno, but you will most likely use the middle one, the Ponte di Mezzo.

The southern part of Pisa city center is of limited interest to tourists. Here is the train station, the bus station and many of the cheaper hotels. The Corso Italia shopping street extends from the main square of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II and up to the Ponte di Mezzo.

Otherwise, there are not many attractions in the south, with the exception of the Gothic 13th century church of Chiesa di Santa Maria della Spina, which supposedly houses a tower from the crown of Jesus.

City Profile

• Abbreviation: PI
• Country: Italy

North of Pisa

When you cross the Ponte di Mezzo bridge to the northern parts of Pisa center, you first reach the Piazza Garibaldi square. This is where Borgo Stretto, the main street of ancient medieval Pisa, starts. By the time it reached the northern city walls, it had changed its name to Via Oberdan and on to Via Carducci. There are many shops, newsstands and banks.

Just west of Borgo Stretti lies the large and beautiful square of Piazza dei Cavalieri with the impressive Palazzo della Carovana, which houses the prestigious Scuola Normala Superiore di Pisa. Here is also one of Italy’s most reputable universities from 1343, which count Galileo Galilei, Andrea Bocelli, former President Gronchi and Pope Clement XII among his former students or lecturers.

But what everyone comes to Pisa to see is in the northwest corner of the city center. Campo dei Miracoli (Miracle Square) is officially called Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square) by those who would rather focus on Pisa’s majestic cathedral from 1064 instead of the architecturally unsuccessful tower that all visitors are most concerned about.

Here, tourists abound from early morning to late afternoon, especially during the summer months and weekends.

Among the site’s other attractions beyond the Leaning Tower, you will find the Camposanto cemetery and the round baptismal building Battistero with its fabulous acoustics under the dome. The entire area here is on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

The river promenade Lungarno along the Arno is also nice, and here you will find a couple of interesting museums. To the west lies La Nave Antiche di Pisa, which exhibits objects from the many more than 2,000-year-old shipwrecks found in 1998 where Pisa’s once-powerful fleet sailed from. And in the east lies the Art Gallery of the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo.

Pisa is not a particularly green city. There are many squares and marketplaces, but northeast of Borgo Stretto is a nice and relaxing park next to the church of Santa Catarina. Here, students from the university gather and it is a pleasant place to sit down with a packed lunch.

The areas outside the city walls and south of the railway lines are either residential or industrial areas and are therefore of minimal interest to tourists.

Facts about Pisa

Pisa is the capital of the Italian province of Pisa and is located in Tuscany, Italy. The river Arno, known from Florence, has its outlet in Pisa. Pisa has one of the world’s most famous attractions in the Leaning Tower. But the city has plenty more to offer.

List of Pisa Acronyms

The most commonly used abbreviations about Pisa is PI which stands for Pisa. In the following table, you can see all acronyms related to Pisa, including abbreviations for airport, city, school, port, government, and etc.