Il Tirreno Giornale (PISA, Italia, Thursday 14 June 2001)
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The "Big" Ones Arrive with the President of the Senate Pera - Urbani, Scajola, Lunardi and D'Alema
They Will Get on the Bell Tower in Groups of 30 people for 45 minutes each PISA. After 11 years, next Saturday 16 June, the Leaning Tower will return free of cables, suspenders, and weights, but it will be reopened to the public only in October at the earliest. It was closed January 7 1990, in front of the television cameras of Raffaella Carrą. Today the monument is sounder and more stable: then the leans was 4 meters and 50 centimeters. Today the lean has been reduced by 40 centimeters. Enough, the experts affirm with pride, to guarantee it in good health for the next 250-300 years. "We greet the end of the work of the complicated improvement with great emotion," conducted by 14 members of the international Committee of experts, commented the president of the Work of the Primaziale Pierfrancesco Pacini, "and we redeliver to the city a monument among the most famous in the world". For the occasion, in this festive day, are expected the president of the Senate Marcello Pera, the Minister of the Interior Claudio Scajola, Minister of the Cultural Good and Activities, Urban Giuliano, and Minister of Infrastructures Pietro Lunardi. Also announced the leader Massimo D'Alema, who, when hw was president of the counsel, followed phase one of this adventure". "The entry of the public to the monument," explains Pacini, "will be contingent and will happen only for groups of not more 30 people at a time, accompanied by persons of the Primaziale. Each visit will require 30 or 45 minutes and the schedule of opening will be, indicatively, from 8 AM to 8 PM in summer and from 9 AM to 5 PM in winter. The cost of the ticket, not yet deliberate, will be between 20 and the 25 thousand lire, a price agreed on by the experts and with the office. Already the applications from all the world are coming in, but we still must decide all the particulars needed for reopening of the Tower". Pacini expresses "deep gratitude" to the international Committee presided over by professor Michele Jamiolkowski who Saturday will explain all the interventions that have been finished in this decade. In a sign of recognition each researcher will receive a gold medal from the Primaziale. But not all the intervention on the Tower is concluded. Remaining in fact is still the restoration of the leaning masonry that will be conducted jointly by the Office for the Cultural Good and Activities and the Office of Infrastructures. They are to appropriate the funds that implement the plan, edited by the superintendent, who is now ready. This phase of job will not start realistically before next year. In a moment of such joy, a shadow hangs: that of the conert of Andrea Bocelli that could not be held Sunday 17 June in Piazza dei Miracoli, developed instead in the park of St. Rossore. "The Ronchey decree does not allow events of any kind around heritage monuments. This time it could be an exception," Pacini objects, "I view that an exceptional event for an unique monument of the world is being proposed. I maintain however that the decree must be stayed becasue its integrity is fundamental to safeguard our patrimony". |
Translated by Gary Feuerstein, 18 August 2001, from the Il Tirreno article
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