But Near The Center, You Cannot Have Good Lodgings, Ready
Furnished, For Less Than A Scudo (About Five Shillings) A Day.
The air in summer is reckoned unwholesome by the exhalations
arising from stagnant water in the neighbourhood of the city,
which stands in the midst of a fertile plain, low and marshy:
Yet
these marshes have been considerably drained, and the air is much
meliorated. As for the Arno, it is no longer navigated by vessels
of any burthen. The university of Pisa is very much decayed; and
except the little business occasioned by the emperor's gallies,
which are built in this town, [This is a mistake. No gallies have
been built here for a great many years, and the dock is now
converted into stables for the Grand Duke's Horse Guards.] I know
of no commerce it carried on: perhaps the inhabitants live on the
produce of the country, which consists of corn, wine, and cattle.
They are supplied with excellent water for drinking, by an
aqueduct consisting of above five thousand arches, begun by
Cosmo, and finished by Ferdinand I. Grand-dukes of Tuscany; it
conveys the water from the mountains at the distance of five
miles. This noble city, formerly the capital of a flourishing and
powerful republic, which contained above one hundred and fifty
thousand inhabitants, within its walls, is now so desolate that
grass grows in the open streets; and the number of its people do
not exceed sixteen thousand.
You need not doubt but I visited the Campanile, or hanging-tower,
which is a beautiful cylinder of eight stories, each adorned with
a round of columns, rising one above another.
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