Pisa is more modest about its historical cachet than its better-known brethren, so we stumble upon gems we didn’t anticipate. Byron gave up the ghost two years later, succumbing to fever in the cantonments of Missolonghi in Greece, battling an authoritarian state. They could so easily have slipped back into the Pisa of today, whose encompassing peace still inspires contemplation. Have I conjured up Byron and the Shelleys by simply thinking about them? Rehydration will indeed be needed on such a hot day—so sweltering it was summoning mirages—but in Italy, amazing gelaterias are never far away.