diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index 82ff873a7..53e2aa12b 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -10,9 +10,13 @@ branches:
 before_install:
   - sudo apt-get update -qq
   - sudo apt-get install -qq libjpeg-dev
+  - sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so /usr/lib
+  - sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib
+  - sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib
 # command to install dependencies
 install:
   - pip install -r requirements.txt --use-mirrors
+  - scripts/install_pil.sh
   - pip install pytest-xdist --use-mirrors
 # command to run tests
 script: make test PYTESTOPTS="--tb=short -n10"
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 760fdbd79..a37178243 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -2,4 +2,3 @@
 requests
 # optional:
 argcomplete
-PIL
diff --git a/scripts/install_pil.sh b/scripts/install_pil.sh
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..b3701549b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scripts/install_pil.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+# Install PIL in Travis CI environment for Python 2.x builds.
+set -e
+set -u
+
+if python -c 'import sys; sys.exit(0 if sys.hexversion<0x03000000 else 1)'; then
+  pip install PIL
+fi