Pisa Mind For Tower

By Ryan Kresse

Despite a tilt of over four metres off vertical, despite soft soil and a bad foundations, despite previous attempts to stabilize it, despite WWII, and despite hundreds of thousands of tourists each year pushing on it while posing for photographs, the Leaning Tower of Pisa has stubbornly refused to fall over. And after recent work, it’s not going to do it any time soon.

“All of our expectations have been confirmed,” said geologist and engineer Professor Michele Jamiolkowski in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “Now we can say that the tower can rest easy for at least 300 years,” said Jamiolkowski.

The Tower was in danger of complete collapse in 1990, when it was found to be leaning too far over. It was closed to visitors while engineers stabilized the building with cables and counterweights. Then the tricky techs tried something new.

Dr. John Burland, Pisa Commission member and Professor Emeritus of Soil Mechanics at London's Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine, told the Null, "Soil was removed in very small quantities from the "high" side by means of a special drill."

"This caused the tower to gently sink on the high side causing it to rotate to the north very slowly and gently, thereby reducing the inclination by about 0.5m at the top - reducing it from 4.5m to 4m - not perceptible to the onlookers and tourists."

The tower is now about where it had been in 1700. The Leaning-Slightly-Less Tower of Pisa reopened in 2001, and engineers have watched it closely ever since, finally feeling confident enough to report their success this week.

The Tower began leaning and sinking almost immediately after the original construction began due to a soft soil substrate and a bad foundation. In 1272, engineers tried to compensate for the tilt by building subsequent floors with walls that were taller on one side, thus making the whole structure slightly curved. The seventh floor was completed in 1317, and the bell tower was added in 1372. And the whole lot had been slowly falling over ever since.

Restorers are now cleaning the grit and grime of the centuries off the tower’s grey and white marble.

It still leans, of course. Engineers have no desire to completely take the lean out of it. The lean is important. The lean is the point.

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