Saturday 15 June 2024 – 08:00
With over 100 works including drawings, engravings, paintings, sculptures and photography, the exhibition “The Tower in the Mirror. The many lives of the bell tower of Pisa Cathedral”designed for the 850th anniversary of the laying of the first stone and which will be open to visitors from 15 June to 30 September 2024 in the exhibition space of Palazzo dell’Opera del Duomowill lead visitors through time, from the 13th century to the present day, showing how the perception of the most famous Tower in the world has changed.
Until the 17th century the Tower was depicted as part of a single image which also included the Cathedral and the Baptistery and therefore identified as the Bell Tower of the Cathedral, therefore an accessory architectural structure to the other religious structures in Piazza dei Miracoli; while, from the 18th century the Tower began to be represented as an architectural work in its own right, in a sort of secularization of its visual perception, transforming itself, therefore, already from the times of
Grand Tour from Bell tower to leaning Tower.
Its international notoriety has led it to become a fetish, a self-referential icon, transforming it into a symbol of the city of Pisa and of Italy, making it so imposing that it ends up in the background of the vision of all visitors who hastily observe it.
The exhibition instead leads us back to a more attentive and profound image of the Tower, repositioning it within the religious frame that is Piazza del Duomo and returning it to its original role as a bell tower that marked the hours and called the faithful to prayer.
Some rooms of the exhibition will be dedicated to the interpretation given of the Tower by contemporary artists, such as Magritte And Keith Haring.
The photographic material documented by splendid black and white images will also be vast.
An important part of the exhibition will be dedicated to the restorations that marked its existence from the 19th century, up to the most recent restorations that saved the monument.
