The name of the Tower

nobody@flickr.com (Giovanni V.) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:45:14 -0700

Giovanni V. posted a new topic:

Hello "leaning tower of Pisa" fans!

Here we have a lot of pictures involving the most famous tower in the World... but do you know its real name?
Many people call it "Tower of Pisa", or contracting "Pisa Tower". Some call simply "Pisa". But Pisa is the name of the city, it's like calling the Colosseum "Rome".
Then what?
It's a simple thing. The Tower is the freestanding belltower (campanile) of the Cathedral church of Pisa.
The church is entitled to Santa Maria Assunta (St.Mary of the Assumption).
The belltowers are commonly referred with the name of the related church, because usually they are part of the same building.
So we can say that the name of the leaning Tower is "Campanile di Santa Maria".
We can found proofs of that in old documents, at least until XIX century, before the tourist era when buildings and places began to be called with popular (and commercial) names.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

The name of the Tower