Leaning Tower of Pisa:
They have tried for 700 years to
Correct the Inclination
Art. n.4 (PISA, Italia, Sept, 1995) La Nazione Giornale Article by Guglielmo Vezzosi (PISA, Italia, Sept, 1995) - The placing of the first stone for the construction of the most famous Tower on Earth occurred on 9 August 1173. But the problems for the bell tower began almost immediately, so much that less than 100 years after the date of the start of the work, precisely March 15 1298, the first commission of entrusted experts was already facing the task of "the Tower Emergency". Since then there have been 17 committees of experts called to deal with the mysteries of the bell tower of Pisa and with its inclination. The last one, composed of scholars of world fame, installed the day after the closing of the Tower, the day of the Epiphany in 1990. Then, mayor of Pisa, Giacomino Granchi, shut the front door of the bell tower. The event was transmitted live on television, during the transmission "Restart from Two" conducted by Raffaella Carra. In the last day of opening to the public, a record number of visitors was reached: in fact, they bought 2,644 tickets from the ticket office . But padlocks were not installed 24 hours when already good merchants were thinking about how to take advantage of the closing of the Pisan monument. They did in fact print a manifesto on which the Guinigi tower (in Lucca) was promoted. Only too clear is the allusion of the invitation: "The Guinigi tower in Lucca has only one thing that leans: the tree that grows on its top." The technical commission, which repeatedly has made reports noting "empty" legislative and bureaucratic delays in the disbursement of the necessary financings for intervention of the consolidation, for the moment takes on the job and decides to proceed urgently with work of any sum. In May 1992 strong rings of steel had been placed at the height of the first story of the Campanile. The beneficient effect of this "band of steel" is the closing of cracks in the external walls. After the installation of the rings, operation "counterweight": at the foot of the tower, at the location of the greatest displacement, 600 tons of lead ingots have been placed. The installation began in July 1993 and proceeded for any months. The measure works: only the speed of inclination of the monument is halted, but the Tower is not straightened. The complex system of computerized monitors (counting more than two hundred sophisticated tools) gives a miraculous response: in little more than six months the Campanile has recovered millimeters, reversing the process of inclination that seemed irreversible. The news goes out to the world. The immediate red alert is gone for now. But the mysteries of the Tower still swirl around the steep spiral of the its 294 stairs.
Translated by Gary Feuerstein, 20 March 1998 from an article originally posted by Prof. Piero PIEROTTI
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