Pisa lured us with its tipsy tower. No representation can project the image one gets when standing but a few meters from its sunken base and gazing upon its tilted crown. Had I chosen to ascend to the apex of this strange structure, I surely would have resisted moving down the tilted surface for fear of my own weight upsetting the balance.

Located on the ‘Piazza dei Miracoli’, the white marble-clad tower is the square's crowning glory, rising 190 feet above it. The nearby cathedral, baptistery and ‘camposanto’ were built by Pisans. The Pisans were a peoples who believed themselves to be the indisputable heirs of the Roman Empire. Lucky for Rome – they were not.

It doesn’t seem quite right that someone builds a bell tower on unstable ground and, just because it does not fall over, he gets praise for it. Well, apparently no one knows who the architect is so, perhaps he’s not so proud of it in any case.

Construction began in 1173, and the tower leaned almost from the outset. It was unwittingly built on the soft silt of a buried riverbed in three different stages. Over the centuries engineers and builders made efforts to correct the lean using schemes that only made the tower slant farther.

The ground beneath the tower first started to sink after the first three stories were built. I wonder if they knew that this would be a great tourist trap some day? The tower, unfortunately, is surrounded by what may be Italy's tackiest ring of souvenir stands. This spectacle is tourism at its most crass. Wear gloves.