A picky influencer’s increasingly uncomfortable review of Italy’s most famous architectural accident.
Historic charm. Endless stairs. Questionable reality.
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Well, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Finally. It’s not as photogenic as I thought. I expected it to be more…algorithm friendly. A European landmark that could capture attention. It’s just a…a sun-bleached tower caught in a terrible Pilates pose. Tilting oddly against the sky.
It’s also smaller than I expected. The lighting? Well, it seems to have come from the era when it was built. Inconsistent. The pigeons also seemed deeply unfriendly. Cooing and hissing non-stop. You will not like beaks always on your shoes.
And the staircase is endless. Especially with it bent like a yoga instructor who had taken the wrong step. And where are those elevators? And those swarms of tourists fighting Waterloo battles for selfies right in the middle of the stairs are exasperating.
I did take a picture, though. It seems…unnaturally close.
And ding…ding…ding. Ding…ding…ding. That bell. It sounds so strangely hollow. A note that hovers like an unwanted guest. Way too much noise. Especially with everyone laughing like banshees. The echoes are misplaced cathedral sounds.
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So now I’m back at the hotel, thumbing through the few selfies I managed to take without the crowds pushing my camera into a Cirque du Soleil tumble downstairs.
Something odd. You will notice that the tower bends in different ways in all the photos. One of my followers told me that it bent in the opposite direction in another picture. Towers actually do that? I’d better head to the kitchen for that leftover pizza…I can’t sleep now.
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On the whole, The Leaning Tower of Pisa is a structure of beauty which presents many photo opportunities. A historically impressive monument.
Horror buffs would appreciate the unexpected emotional discomfort that comes with the 123 –yes, 123 — bell clangs that attack the ears as they climb the tower. I wouldn’t return alone. The tower’s not so comforting at night.
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Mirrors of the Mind by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.
