Pisa Tower Chronicles: Tilting Through Time✨

The Leaning Tower of Pisa, or simply Tower of Pisa, is the bell tower, or freestanding bell tower, of Pisa Cathedral. It is known to lean almost 4 degrees due to its unstable foundation. This tower is one of his three structures in Pisa’s Piazza del Duomo, including the Pisa Cathedral and the Baptistry.

The height of the tower is 55.86m below ground, 56.67m above ground, and the width of the base wall is 2.44m. Its weight is estimated at 14,500 tons. In the tower, he has 296 or 294 steps. The 7th-floor north-facing stairs he two steps less.

The tower leaned during his 12th-century construction because the ground was too soft to support the weight of the building. Things got even worse when construction was completed in the 14th century. By 1990 the incline reached 5.5 degrees. Renovation work was carried out from 1993 to 2001, the structure was stabilized and the inclination was reduced to 3.97 degrees.

Architect in Leaning Tower of Pisa

Controversy continues over the identity of the architect who designed the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The design was for many years attributed to Guglielmo and his 12th-century Pisa-based prominent artist Bonano, who is particularly known for his bronze casting of the Pisa Cathedral. Pisano left Pisa for Monreale in Sicily in 1185 but returned and died in his hometown.

A casting inscribed with his name was found at the base of his tower in 1820, which may be related to his bronze door on the façade of the cathedral, which was destroyed in 1595. A 2001 study indicates that the original architect was Diocisalvi, based on the date of construction and similarities to other works by Diocisalvi, particularly the Campanile and Baptistery of San Nicola in Pisa. It seems that.

Construction in Leaning Tower of Pisa

The tower was built in three phases over 199 years. On 5 January 1172, Donnaberta di Bernardo, his widow, and inhabitant of the Opera House of Santa Maria bequeathed his 60 soldiers to Sancté Marie Opera House. This amount was used to purchase some of the stone that still forms the foundation of the bell tower today. The cornerstone of the tower he laid on 9 August 1173.

Work on the first floor of the white marble bell tower began on 14 August of the same year, a period of military success and prosperity. This ground floor is a blind arcade linked by columns inlaid with classical Corinthian capitals. [citation needed] Almost four centuries later, Giorgio Vasari wrote:

“Guglielmo is said to have laid the foundation stone of the bell tower of Pisa Cathedral in 1174 with the sculptor Bonano.”

In 1178

After construction progressed to its second floor in 1178, the tower began to sink. This was due to the fact that the foundation was only 3 meters high, rested on weak and unstable ground and that the design was flawed from the start. Construction was then suspended for almost a century as the Republic of Pisa fought almost continuously against Genoa, Lucca, and Florence. This gave time for the soil below to settle. Otherwise, the tower would almost certainly have collapsed. On December 27, 1233, the Herald the worker Benenato, son of his Botticis, oversaw the continuation of the construction of the tower.

On 23 February 1260

On 23 February 1260 Giovanni his son of Pisano, and Guido his Speziale, were chosen to build the tower. On April 12, 1264, the Camposanto architect Giovanni DiSimone and his 23 workers went to the mountains near Pisa to quarry marble. The cut stone was given to the worker of San Francesco, Rainaldo Speziale. Construction resumed in 1272 under Di Simone. To compensate for the slope, engineers built an upper floor with one side higher than the other. This is why the tower is curved. Construction was halted again in 1284 after the Pisans were defeated by the Genoese at the Battle of Meloria.

The seventh floor was completed in 1319. The bell chamber he finally added in 1372. The tower was built by Tommaso di Andrea Pisano, who successfully combined the Gothic elements of the bell tower with the Romanesque tower. He has seven bells, one for each note of the musical major scale. the largest was installed in 1655

History of the following construction Leaning Tower of Pisa

Between 1589 and 1592, Galileo Galilei, then living in Pisa, tested two cannonballs of different masses to prove that the descent velocity was legally independent of the free-fall mass. It is said to have been dropped from a tower.

The main source for this is his biography Racconto Storico della vita di Galileo Galilei, written in 1654 by Vincenzo Viviani, Galileo’s disciple, and secretary, but published long after his death. was in 1717.

During World War II, the Allies assumed that the Germans were using the building of tower as an observation post. U.S. Army Sergeant Leon Wextein, tasked with confirming the German presence within the tower, was so struck by the beauty of the cathedral and its bell tower that he refrained from ordering artillery fire to prevent its destruction.

Much effort has been made to bring the tower back upright, or at least keep it from collapsing. Most of these efforts have failed. Some have made the trend worse. On February 27, 1964, the Italian government requested assistance to prevent the tower from collapsing. However, due to the role that this element plays in promoting Pisa’s tourism industry, it was considered important to maintain the current direction.

Event Earthquake survival

Since 1280, Pisa tower has survived at least four strong earthquakes. A 2018 engineering study concluded that the tower resisted shaking due to the dynamic interaction of the ground and structure.

The toughness and height of the tower, combined with the softness of the subfloor, affect the vibration characteristics of the tower so that it does not resonate with seismic motion. The same soft ground that caused the tower to tilt and threaten to collapse helped the tower survive.

About Guinness World Records Leaning Tower of Pisa

Two churches in Germany question their tower’s status as the most crooked building in the world. The 15th-century leaning tower of Suhlhusenplatz and the 14th-century belfry in the town of Bad Frankenhausen.

Guinness World Records measured the towers of Pisa and Suurhusen, and the former was found to have a slope of 3.97 degrees from her. In June 2010, Guinness World Records recognized the Capital Gate Building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates as “the world’s leanest man-made tower”.

It has an inclination of 18 degrees, almost five times that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. However, it is intentionally slanted. Wanaka’s Leaning Tower in New Zealand was also built intentionally, leaning at an angle of 53 degrees to the ground.