The Sinopie Museum (Museo delle Sinopie) is a small art museum on the southern edge of Pisa’s Piazza dei Miracoli, housed in a former medieval hospital. While crowds head for the Leaning Tower, visitors here can explore a less familiar side of Italian painting: the large preparatory drawings made beneath frescoes.
These drawings, called sinopie after the reddish earth pigment traditionally associated with the Black Sea port of Sinope, came to light during the restoration of the nearby Camposanto. A fire following wartime shelling in July 1944 badly damaged the cemetery’s frescoes. When the surviving paintings were detached from the walls for conservation, the drawings beneath them were revealed.
Displayed on a monumental scale, the sinopie expose the confident lines, revisions and compositional choices behind the Camposanto’s medieval fresco cycles, including the celebrated Triumph of Death. The drawings can be faint, so take time to look closely and read the explanatory panels; a visit to the Camposanto afterwards helps connect these first ideas with the finished paintings.
The museum is a short walk from the Leaning Tower and roughly 25 minutes on foot from Pisa Centrale station. Check the official Opera della Primaziale Pisana website for current hours and ticket options, as combined monument tickets are often available. If you plan to climb the Tower, book its timed entry first and arrange the museum around it.