Do i really need to book tix for a tour of the leaning tower of pisa? Can you just turn up?

We will be there for one night/day in late August. Will seeing it from the outside be enough?

17 euro each for 20 minutes seems a bit rich?

What do you guys think?

For me,seeing it from the outside was plenty,but I don't have a need to climb every tower and church I find.

I suspect you may be satisfied with just seeing the exterior. There are a couple of other "buildings" on the "Field of Miracles" and those all lean to a certain extent as well but not to the degree that the twoer does.

I am sure someone will turn up and tell you it isn't worth the trouble but in my own case I found myself somewhat entranced by it even though I have seen pictures of it for years.

Somebody else asked this recently. See this thread.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34836788

I was happy just seeing the exterior as well! Probably had knee fatigue after climbing what seemed like every tower in Tuscany!!!

Hi q,

If you want to go up in the tower, you need tix. Best ordered in advance.

We travel with three kids, so we climb everything that can be climbed. You DO need reservations, unless you think you can kill many hours until your time comes up. (They assign everyone a time slot - no just showing up and getting in line.) It was pretty neat (but slick) climing up those very worn stairs.

We took the trip to Pisa for the kids, since that was something in Italy that I knew they knew about already. During the course of the trip, I came to love the IDEA of the Leaning Tower...it's a monument to bad decision making everywhere. It teaches us that people are the same, even centuries ago, in a far away land. You see, the leaning tower was not complete, straight, then started leaning; rather, it started leaning pretty early in the construction process. Did they abandon the project and start over on more stable ground? NO! They had that "Oh, I can fix that!" attitude that propels so many ill fated home-improvement projects forward. I just love it!

It depends! My child wanted very much to climb the tower and I had memories of climbing it as a teen, so it was important to us. It IS an interesting climb and an amazing view. If you decide to climb, I would book tickets early, as we did not and waited 2 hours for our time slot. It wasn't a bad wait and we were not sure when we'd be there, so reservations weren't really an option for us, but if you can be that organized, I would book in advance. Good luck. Try
www.opapisa.it
(There's a link for an English version)

missypie--the Pisans obviously did not understand the concept surrounding "sunk" costs any better than many people today.

view from outside is good

You need a tickete to go inside the cathedral -- and you should see the interior of the cathedral if you go to Pisa. It's stunning and historic. So you might want to reserve that in advance to avoid any lines in August.

(I HATE climbing narrow stone stairs and am pretty indifferent to views of cities, so I enjoyed the extremely beautiful tower from the ground.)

We were in Pisa 4 summers ago in Mid-June with our then 11 and 15 yr. olds. After seeing pictures of that tower for as long as I can remember, we had to climb it and it was great! To see the steps so worn down makes you stop and think how incredibly old the tower is! One of my favorite pictures is of the kids standing on one of those worn steps. We did not have reservations and maybe had to wait an hour so used that time to see the church and baptistry.