Pisa is a city in north-central Italy, in Tuscany, on the river Arno. The world knows it for the Leaning Tower — a bell tower built on soft ground that began to tilt while it was still going up. Beside it stand a famous cathedral and other church buildings in the same square, the kind of place students see in photos long before they see it in person. The name is Italian Pisa, from Latin Pisae, and that Latin name is of Etruscan origin — a very old local name, not a Latin word we can still break into pieces. People tell a story that Galileo dropped two weights from the tower to show that heavy and light things fall together; though actually that experiment is probably a later tale, not something we can pin on him with a clear record. In English the name sounds like PEE-suh.