A rope that hangs from the centre of the top touches the wall before it reaches the bottom.

Standing on the summit, one does not feel altogether comfortable when he looks down from the high side; but to crawl on your breast to the verge on the lower side and try to stretch your neck out far enough to see the base of the tower, makes your flesh creep, and convinces you for a single moment in spite of all your philosophy, that the building is falling.

You handle yourself very carefully, all the time, under the silly impression that if it is not falling, your trifling weight will start it unless you are particular not to "bear down" on it.
The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe.

It is eight hundred years old.

Its grandeur has outlived the high commercial prosperity and the political importance that made it a necessity, or rather a possibility.