2014 marks a milestone anniversary for Pisa Cathedral: 950 years have passed since its first stone was laid. Among the events and activities organised in celebration, the most significant is the restoration of the cathedral’s apse. Pisa’s department of cultural heritage and Rome’s institute of restoration and conservation will oversee the project, which is expected to be completed by December 2014 and will involve specialists in restoration of stone.
Along with the cathedral, other monuments in the piazza will undergo restoration: through October 2014, the façade of the Museo delle Sinopie will be restored. The Museo dell’Opera will be renovated. Both buildings will be part of the Angeli exhibition opening in May, which will showcase works by Polish artist Igor Mitoraj. Many of Mitoraj’s sculptures, paintings, drawings and plasterworks will be displayed in the Museo delle Sinopie until January 2014. In addition, Anima mundi, a sacred music festival, will run during September and October.
As Pierfrancesco Pacini, president of the Primaziale Pisana, the association that manages the monuments in Pisa’s famous piazza, explained, the project will ‘bring the piazza back to completion — in this piazza we have a great metaphor for Christian life: from the birth symbolism associated with the baptistery to the life represented by the cathedral with its bell tower, from the suffering implicit in the new hospital nearby to the idea of death in the monumental graveyard.’