What is one building you would think of when you hear the word “Italy”? While many people recall the Eiffel Tower in Paris or even the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is arguably the most notorious of them all, due to its unique landscape and mysterious “tilt”. Today, we will find out why the Leaning Tower of Pisa is tilted and if it will collapse in the foreseeable future.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa in Piazza del Duomo, Italy.
The history of the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Let’s first examine the series of imperfections and failures in architecture and engineering that caused the Leaning Tower of Pisa to almost tumble in history. The tower was first constructed in 1173 and served as a bell tower. The tower stood upright for over 5 years, but soon, the tower started tilting after the third floor was completed. This was due to a structural flaw that haunted the tower for centuries: its underground base.
“Pisa” comes from a Greek word for “marshy land”, meaning the ground's top layers were filled with clay, mud and wet sand, and had little structural integrity to support the tower. The architects believed that a 3-metre-deep foundation would be enough to support the building, but in 1178, the southern side of the tower started sinking into the ground. The government quickly realised this issue and halted the tower's construction (up to the fourth floor) for another 100 years, while they focused on an ongoing war with Genoa.
After these 100 years, engineer and architect Giovanni di Simone decided to add more floors to the tower. He originally planned to counteract the tilt by making the northern side of the building shorter than the southern side, but he underestimated the weak and troublesome basis of the tower, causing it to tilt further to 1.6 degrees.
As architecture and engineering advanced through time, Alessandro Della Gheradesca gave the tower a shot in 1838 by digging a pathway around the tower to allow the base of the tower to be examined, but that caused the tower to tilt even further due to a weaker foundation. Luckily, the tower survived the rage of WWII as American soldiers had to retreat before they were going to blow up the tower.
Will it ever collapse in the future?
After WWII, technological innovation in modelling software helped modern engineers to analyse the base and construct a plan to finally straighten the tower after almost 6 centuries. While the computers allowed them to do so, many suggested keeping the tower at a tilt of 4 degrees to maintain the historical accuracy and value of the tower. Today, the leaning Tower of Pisa is ever so stable and will stand for at least another 3 centuries.
Works Cited
TED-Ed (2019). Why doesn’t the Leaning Tower of Pisa fall over? - Alex Gendler. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFqf6aKdOC0 [Accessed 6 May 2024].
Romeprivateguides.com. (2017). The history behind the Leaning Tower of Pisa. [online] Available at: https://www.romeprivateguides.com/en/blog/about-florence/the-history-behind-the-leaning-tower-of-pisa.html. [Accessed 11 May 2024].
Comments