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My encounter with white Panda man made me realise that Pisa is different. He pulled up to let me cross the road. Surely some mistake. This is Italy, where the pedestrian is one step from eternity and the zebra crossing merely a way to brighten up the tarmac. I tried again: another motorist nodded me across. Pisa, it seemed, was a town with time on its hands.

Along the porticoed borgo stretto were two more reasons why Pisan life is so unhurried: books and bikes. Pisa is a quintessential university town. Forty percent of its inhabitants are students - the only town Italy with more bookshops than churches. And in a city with pancake-flat roads and medieval streets, two-wheeled transport is the way to go.

Cycles are everywhere, the older and crankier the better; preferably Mary Poppins style with dented chain guards and wonky wicker baskets. Some are decorated with layers of punkish pink paint, others left to develop a rust-red patina of age. With locks that could be sprung by a three-year-old, bikes are frequently “borrowed” by pedestrians in a hurry. Pisan cycles lead a karmic existence – as one disappears another is found. So I did like Pisans do and borrowed a bike. Well actually I hired one and pedalled to the piazza to investigate Pisa’s touristic raison d’etre

“Long live the tower of Pisa, which leans, leans and leans - but will never fall”. Pisan children have been chanting this rhyme for centuries, but recently their voices have been tinged with desperation as the world’s most famous high-rise balanced on a knife edge – inches away from collapsing into its builder’s folly of silt foundations.

For eleven years the tower was in architectural intensive care; held in place by 830 tonnes of lead counterweights and two brutish metal slings. After drawn-out deliberations engineers worked out how to reverse the incline by half a metre and the tottering high rise was preserved for another century. Pisa has its tower back and the town has a spring in its heel.

‘We love the tower’ says Ilaria di Baccio ‘It means that all over the world people know about Pisa’. For Ilaria the tower is part of her genetic make up: ‘If you’re born here the tower is with you for life. As a child I would lie on the ground and stare up at it from different angles. When I was at University never I went up it because of a legend that every time a student reached the top they have to study for an extra year’.

The tower is the Campo dei Miracoli’s flagship. The famous lean is unearthly, almost comical - as if the gleaming marble rocket is taking off into space. But the Campo architecture blends everything together the most thrilling square in the world - cathedral, baptistery and tower floating on a shimmering sea of green lawn.

The domed baptistery took 242 years to complete. Paolo Mirelli is one of the building’s doormen - keepers of an ancient tradition based on the baptistery’s extraordinary acoustics. A tip of 5 euros and Paulo stepped into the centre of the building to chant three notes. The echo is long and pure, its notes blending into a chord which seems to embed itself in the stone.

When a doorman starts working at the baptistery he is ‘trained’ by the old hands Mirelli explained. ‘We develop a style and become known for our “sound” - a kind of musical signature’. Mirelli pointed out an arrow etched into the marble floor then up to the face of a singing man carved into the top of one of the columns. ‘For the best note you stand on the arrow and sing directly into the carving’ he explained. ‘Every time I chant the notes I’m sure the masons who made this building can hear me in heaven’.

Tourists rarely stray from the Campo dei Miracoli; but the Pisa beyond the piazza has much to offer. Cycling down cobblestones, I clattered into Via delle Colenne where the daily market bursts with life. Here gapped-toothed old ladies in knitted skirts run stalls they have owned since the war. In a shady corner Giovanni – each of his three cats sitting atop a street bollard – offers passers by hoary tales in exchange for a few lire to feed his pets. A spit across the market piazza is the Jackson Pollock. Once inside this determinedly down-at-heel bar - its sign scribbled onto a piece of old board - I was swept into espresso fuelled conversations on the state of the world. The universe put to rights, I moved across the road to the Pasticceria Il Vccchio Forno for a slice of torta con bischeri - a traditional Pisan chocolate cake with pine nuts.

With the cathedral ruling the roost, it’s easy to view Pisa’s other churches as poor relations. Though none impose like the flamboyant duomo, each has a story to tell. My favourite is San Martino - the resting place of Santa Bona, a C12 pilgrim adopted by air hostesses as their patron saint Pisa airport is five minutes from the centre - as you fly in you can almost see the whites of the tourists’ eyes in the campo. Lying in an ornate baroque tomb and with a view of the skies through the church window, Santa Bona can keep tabs on her air hostesses.

Pisan night life is free from the tourist frenzy which overruns Rome and Florence. A slow stroll along the Arno with the sun sinking down over the water can be a pleasingly solitary experience. University life unfolds along the riverside; many students spend their days cramming for exams in the waterside cafés where a pizza lunch is the price of a cappuccino in campo. But even upmarket Pisan restaurants don’t sting the wallet. Osteria la Stanzina - located inside a medieval bell-tower once used to call students to lectures - serves sarde alla beccafico (sardines in orange sauce) for prices which seem unchanged since medieval times.

It is hard to believe that for over three centuries this quiet town was one of the world’s great maritime powers. Although there are constant reminders of Pisa’s naval supremacy - from captured pirate boats exhibited in churches, to statues of dolphin in the piazze – the sea is nowhere to be seen. Pisans are constantly being quizzed about how they conquered the waves without a coast. They patiently explain how the sea rolled away to the west and Pisa’s port was no more. In many ways this was Pisa’s blessing; while Genoa and Venice continued fighting the waves, Pisa put up its feet and adopted a relaxed attitude to life. An attitude which is a pleasure to share.

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