The story of this place
Legend says the Camposanto ('holy field') was built around shiploads of sacred soil brought back from Golgotha in Jerusalem during the Crusades, so that Pisan nobles could be buried in earth from Christ's crucifixion site. Begun in 1278 and completed in 1464, this vast walled cloister on the Piazza dei Miracoli was covered in magnificent 14th-century frescoes, above all the terrifying 'Triumph of Death,' painted after the Black Death. On 27 July 1944, an Allied incendiary shell struck the roof; molten lead poured over the frescoes and destroyed or gravely damaged most of them. Decades of restoration have recovered fragments, and the preliminary drawings (sinopie) revealed beneath are displayed nearby—a poignant record of art nearly erased by war.