We took a train from Venice to Pisa as it was to be the start of our Tuscan cooking adventure over the next few days. As we were going to be spending the night, the next a.m. on the agenda was of course the Leaning Tower. Our schedule was tight and we did not have time to climb it, but we did have time to wander all around it and create funny poses beside it. The tower is in the Field of Miracles (Campo dei Miracoli) with the cathedral (or Duomo). The Leaning Tower is actually the bell tower for the nearby Duomo. It is nearly 200 feet tall and 55 feet wide. It weighs 14,000 tons and leans at 15 feet off the vertical axis. It rests on a shallow 13 ft foundation and is sinking on the south side. There are 8 stories to the tower, 294 steps to the top, and it took 2 centuries to complete with at least 3 different architects. As an aside note, it was at it’s summit that Galileo Galilei performed his famous experiments with gravity.

The first stones were laid in 1174 by Bonanno Pisano and the tower started to lean almost right after construction was started due to the marshy multi-layered unstable soil. The first four floors were completed and then construction was stopped for unknown reasons. In 1272, a second architect began and built the next three stories but this time angled them backwards to try to stop the lean. Construction was then stopped again for unknown reason, but then finally restarted/finished in 1350 when the belfry was added.

There have been many attempts through out history to try to correct the tower’s lean. In 1550, one architect tried to solve the problem by reinforcing the base and this actually worked until 1838 when they tried once again to fix the problem and pumped water out of the ground. This then destabilized the tower more and worsened the lean by 1mm/yr! In 1990 they closed the tower and spent 30 million to try to fix the problem. First they used anchored steel cables, then 600 tons of lead on the north side as a counterweight. Nothing really helped until a breakthrough came when they drilled 15 ft holes in the ground and sucked out 60 tons of soil! This then straightened the tower by 6 inches. It turned back history by a couple hundred years. But, there are still some trouble spots due to the lean. On the side that sees less sun, more moss grows that breaks apart the mortar and stones, and on the other side that sees more sun there are more problems with wind and erosion. Alas the tower continues to fall, but hopefully it will still be around for awhile!

Categories: Becky Blogs, Italy