Pisa has one picture in the world's head, and it is of a tilted tower, but the town behind the picture rewards a rider who stays for lunch. It sits on the flat Arno plain a few kilometres from the sea, with about seventy-seven thousand people, many of them students at the university and the Scuola Normale. The mountain ridge of the Monte Pisano rises to the east, low and wooded, and gives the city an odd comfort, like a hand on the shoulder.
The tower itself began in 1173 and leaned almost at once, because the ground beneath is soft clay and sand. Construction stopped, started again after generations, and eventually reached its full height in the fourteenth century. The cathedral, baptistery and cemetery that share the grass of Piazza dei Miracoli are older and, honestly, just as lovely. Pisa was one of the great maritime republics, rivalling Genoa and Venice, and its wealth built all this before the harbour silted up and the sea retreated. Galileo was born here, and the story that he dropped weights from the tower is probably a legend.
For motorcycles, the city is slow, cyclists and one-way systems, and the centre has limited-traffic zones that catch visitors, so check before riding in. Park outside the walls and walk. The good riding lies elsewhere: the Monte Pisano roads toward Calci and the Certosa, a former Carthusian monastery, wind through olive terraces and chestnut woods. Along the coast, the San Rossore regional park shelters pine forest, marsh and wild boar, and a quiet road runs toward Marina di Pisa.
Fuel is available all around the ring road, and so is food. Try cecina, a thin baked chickpea pancake, or the Tuscan bread soups, and expect simple trattorie rather than grandeur. Summer is hot and crowded around the tower, so late afternoon is kinder, and winter has fog on the plain. After a day in the hills, Pisa is a good place to end: flat, easy, and with more going on than its famous leaning neighbour.