2014 marks a milestone anniversary for Pisa Cathedral: 950 years have passed since its first stone was laid. One of the more significant projects is the restoration of the cathedral’s apse. Pisa’s department of cultural heritage and Rome’s institute of restoration and conservation will oversee the project, which is expected to be completed by December 2014. The Piazza dei Miracoli is recognized as an important center of European medieval art and one of the finest architectural complexes in the world.
The square is dominated by four great sacred edifices: the Pisa Cathedral, the Pisa Baptistry, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Camposanto Monumentale (Monumental Cemetery). Partly paved and partly grassed, the Piazza dei Miracoli is also the site of the Ospedale Nuovo di Santo Spirito (New Hospital of the Holy Spirit), which houses the Sinopias Museum and the Cathedral Museum (Museo dell’Opera del Duomo). The square is sometimes called the Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles). In 1987 the whole square was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
As Pierfrancesco Pacini, president of the Primaziale Pisana, the association that manages the monuments in Pisa’s famous piazza, explained, the project will ‘bring the piazza back to completion — in this piazza we have a great metaphor for Christian life: from the birth symbolism associated with the baptistery to the life represented by the cathedral with its bell tower, from the suffering implicit in the new hospital nearby to the idea of death in the monumental graveyard.’
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