CENTRAL ITALY.--On the other hand, the builders of Central and Southern Italy still followed the simple basilican plan and retained the wooden roofs and, in consequence, clerestory windows. They raised, however, in many cases the level of the choir and placed a crypt chamber beneath it; which sometimes, as in =S. Miniato=, =Florence=, is open to the nave. But their inventiveness was displayed rather in the details of decoration. Central Italy being rich in marbles, the use of this material for embellishing the exterior and the interior with bands and geometric designs was carried to such a perfection as virtually to constitute a style. The most beautiful example is that of =S. Miniato=, where, too, the open woodwork of the roof has been restored to its original colouring of gold, green, blue, and red. Another notable example of this developed style of decoration is presented at =Pisa=, in the group of buildings comprising the =Cathedral=, =Campanile=, and =Baptistry=. Here the façades are embellished--one might almost say composed, for the embellishment is applied so constructionally--with tiers of blind arcades or of open arcades of red and white marble. Those of the Baptistry received in the fifteenth century additions of Gothic canopies and traceries, but the front of the Cathedral and the circular Campanile retain their original character. The Baptistry, also circular in plan, is crowned by an outer hemispherical dome, through which penetrates a conical dome, which in the interior is supported on four piers and eight columns. The influence of Byzantine workmen is seen here as well as in the dome which crowns the crossing of the Cathedral. The transepts of the latter are prolonged beyond the basilica plan and terminate in apses. The Campanile, which comprises eight stories embellished with arcading, is known as “The Leaning Tower,” since it inclines from the perpendicular about 13 feet in a height of 179, the greatest inclination being in the ground story, after which there is a slight recovery toward the perpendicular. It was begun in 1174 and completed in 1350. Vasari, the historian of Italian artists, writing some 200 years later, ascribes this lean to a settlement of the foundations. His explanation, though occasionally disputed, had been generally accepted, until the investigations of Professor William H. Goodyear, in 1910, established the fact that the inclination was intentional and provided for from the start of the work.