Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Piazza dei Miracoli

Leaning Tower of Pisa tickets: the climb, the cathedral and every monument on the square

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the bell tower of the city’s cathedral, tilted about five degrees, and with a ticket you walk all the way to the top at a time you book. Every Leaning Tower of Pisa ticket includes the cathedral too. The entry ticket we sell starts at €25, and it’s supplied by the Opera della Primaziale Pisana (Opa Pisa for short, or just the Opera), which runs the monuments and the ticket offices on the square.

The time on the ticket is the time you go up, and it’s strict: arrive late and you lose both the climb and the money. Our entry ticket can’t be refunded or moved to another time either, so pick a slot with room to spare after the train from Florence.

The Tower works on timed slots for everyone, so there’s no separate fast queue for the climb: your booked time is your entry. The Fast Track ticket with an audio guide, at €30, describes a timed Tower slot and fast-track entry to the cathedral, plus an audio guide in eight languages that lasts about an hour. You collect the tickets at the Sinopie Museum on the square, so allow a few minutes for that before your time.

If you’d rather have someone explain it all, the guided tour, from €57, takes groups of up to 15 round the cathedral for an hour and a half, in English, German or Spanish. Its description has you going up the Tower after about an hour, but the listing names only the cathedral and the guide as included, so check your option covers the climb before you pay.

Who can climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the bag rules

The age rule goes by year of birth. In 2026, children born in 2018 or earlier can go up, so a child who turns 8 by 31 December is fine even if the birthday is after your visit. Babies in arms aren’t allowed, and staff can ask for proof of a child’s age.

There are no reduced Tower tickets: under-18s pay the full price and climb with an adult. The only free entry is for visitors with a disability and one companion, with a certificate, at a few set times early and late in the day, and the Opera asks to be told by email some days ahead. On the square’s other monuments, children under 11 on a family visit go in free, so for them the plain Entry Ticket is enough.

The climb takes about 30 minutes on foot, on uneven steps that can get slippery, and the Opera advises against it for anyone with heart or muscle problems.

Pisa Cathedral: free entry, with a pass

The cathedral the Tower belongs to costs nothing to enter, but you still need a pass. Any paid ticket includes one with no set time, so with a Tower ticket you go in before or after the climb. If the cathedral is all you want, you pick up a timed pass at the ticket offices on the square; it can’t be booked online.

It opens at 10:00, an hour after the Tower, and its hours change on Sundays and religious holidays. It’s a working church, with dress rules set by the Opera, and the museum bookshops sell scarves if you need to cover up. During Mass only one area can be visited, with no photos or explanations.

Leaning Tower of Pisa opening hours this winter

The square’s monuments open every day of the week, and since 2 November they keep shorter hours: 9:00 to 18:00, with the cathedral opening at 10:00. The last entry is 30 minutes before closing at every monument, and from 4 to 7 December the Tower stays open until 19:00.

We can’t see further ahead than that: the Opera’s calendar we read only showed dates to mid-December, so we haven’t seen the Christmas and New Year hours yet. And since the square is run by the Opera, not the state, the free first Sunday of Italy’s state museums doesn’t apply here.

Is the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the Firenze Card?

No, and it isn’t on Florence’s official museum passes either. The Firenze Card’s entries outside the city are in places like Prato and Fiesole, so in Pisa you buy the Tower ticket on its own. For the museums back in Florence, our Firenze Card and Florence’s other passes page shows which pass fits your list.

The Piazza dei Miracoli: the Tower, the cathedral, the Baptistery and the Camposanto

Locals call the cathedral square the Piazza dei Miracoli, the Square of Miracles, and it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. Around the lawn stand the cathedral, the Baptistery in front of it, the Tower behind it and the Camposanto, the square’s monumental cemetery.

The Tower was never a fortress or a lookout. It’s the cathedral’s campanile, built to hold bells, and seven still hang in it, the largest cast in 1655 and weighing 3.5 tonnes. Giorgio Vasari, the 16th-century painter who wrote the lives of Italy’s artists, dated its foundations to 1174.

The Baptistery, where Pisa’s children were baptised, has part of its upper gallery closed for works, so you may not get the whole walk round.

The two museums come with the All Monuments option. The Opera del Duomo Museum fills 26 rooms and has its own audio guide, €5 for a 90-minute route of 55 stops in five languages, and the Sinopie Museum is in the old Ospedale Nuovo di Santo Spirito, a former hospital. The Palazzo dell’Opera only opens for temporary exhibitions.

As a rough guide, allow about two hours for the Tower, the cathedral and the Camposanto, and half a day if you go into everything. The museums have toilets for ticket holders, and the public ones on the square cost €1, free with a paid ticket.

Getting to the Leaning Tower of Pisa from Florence

The easy way is the regional train from Santa Maria Novella, Florence’s main station, to Pisa Centrale, and from there you walk to the square or take the bus.

If you’re flying into Pisa instead, the PisaMover shuttle takes you from the airport to Pisa Centrale, and from there it’s the same walk or bus to the Tower.