Pisa - Baptistery

(Local Name: Battistero) West of the cathedral in Pisa, on the same axis, stands the baptistery - here, as elsewhere in Italy, separate from the church to which it belongs. Construction began in 1153, almost a hundred years after the cathedral but still in the great days of Pisa.

The first architect was one Master Diotisalvi (inscription on pillars flanking the entrance). The likenesses between the baptistery and the cathedral are particularly marked in the earlier phases of the baptistery's construction - the use of the same building material, the patterning with different colors of stone, the articulation of the structure by blind arcading and dwarf galleries.

Since the work of