To the tearing tourist, any parts of Pisa's former power have been scavenged and replaced in a slim, incandescent strip. A 15 minute walk through the drab and modern new town turns into a running of the gauntlet as one is harried mercilessly by aggressive sellers of tat. The temptation is to quickly tick off the soaring yet flawed works of grandeur on the one side, then grab a gelato from the scruffy demountable shopfronts on the other for the return journey.
Sic transit gloria mundi....and yet there are many jewels here, invaluable evidence of her past greatness that lasted from Etruscan to early medieval times.