Great Mistakes by Daniel Cohen

Author:Daniel Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590773475
Publisher: M. Evans & Company

THE LEANING TOWERAND THE BENT

PYRAMID

One of the world’s best-known and most beautiful mistakes is the Leaning Tower in the Italian city of Pisa. The Leaning Tower is one of Italy’s biggest tourist attractions. Practically everyone has seen a picture or drawing of it at one time or another. It is widely admired for its graceful arches made of striking white and colored marble.

But Italy is full of fine buildings. It isn’t the grace of the building that attracts the tourists, it’s the tilt. The tilt is extremely obvious. The Leaning Tower is more than seventeen feet from being straight up and down. And it is slowly getting worse year by year.

Of course the lean, which has made the tower so famous, was an accident. The tower was designed to be the bell tower for the cathedral at Pisa and it was supposed to be perfectly straight. Work on the tower was begun in about 1174. The architects were Bonanno of Pisa and William of Innsbruck.

The construction went along quite nicely at first. But then, when the tower was less than half finished, the builders realized they had made a mistake, a big one. The ground on which they were building the tower was soft. One side of the building began sinking into the earth. Construction was stopped because no one knew what to do.

For about a century the bottom part of the Leaning Tower stood there unfinished. It appeared to have finally settled completely. The people of Pisa wanted a bell tower for their cathedral, so a plan to finish the Leaning Tower was worked out. The new architects decided to build some of the upper stories out of line with the others. The aim was to make up for the tilt and bring the top of the tower closer to being straight up and down. Work started again in 1275, but it wasn’t until 1350 that the building was finally completed.

In spite of the funny tilt it was a handsome building. It was eight stories tall with graceful arches and marble columns. The top story, which is smaller than the others, contains the bells. In total the tower is 179 feet high and 52 feet in diameter. An inside stairway of 296 steps leads to an observation platform. The walls at the base are 13 feet thick, and about half that at the top. It was the sort of tower that was built to last.

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