Word: pisa
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Even though Pisa and Florence were monuments of European culture they were astride a military line, and that line the Germans were bent on holding if they could. Through both cities the Arno flowed between masonry banks, making it a perfect tank trap and barrier to infantry. The Allies held the south bank, the Germans the north. So the war in Italy became a peculiar kind of delicate slugging match among the museums, with world-famous art in no man's land...
Into Florence. The Fifth Army had been pinned in the southern part of Pisa more than a week while the Eighth Army fought its way up to Florence in one of the hardest advances since Rome. Aggressive, gun-happy New Zealanders under Lieut. General Bernard L. Freyberg took the brunt of this fighting and made the most advances...
...just as carefully, but less patiently, avoiding Pisa, but patience was running out (see ART). Yanks of General Mark Clark's Fifth Army were already in the southern part of the town divided by the Arno River. Bowing toward them was the famous eight-story tower and clear in Allied glasses were the figures of German spotters using it for observation...
Italy's famed Leaning Tower of Pisa was last week in danger of being blown to marble bits. The Germans were reported using it as an artillery observation post. Unlike the treasure-strewn city of Florence, 49 miles away, Pisa had not been declared an open city. Other jeopardized treasures of Pisa, beside the 179-foot tower begun in 1174, included...
...Treasures of Pisa's leading gallery, the Museo Civico, including Pisan sculpture of the 14th and 18th Centuries, Flemish and Florentine tapestries, paintings by Gentile da Fabriano, and Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi...