Many Suggest Ways To Stop Pisa’s Tower Leaning

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30827, 12 August 1965, Page 20

Many Suggest Ways To Stop Pisa’s Tower Leaning

fW.Z.P. A. -Reuter) PISA (Italy). Officials responsible for the leaning tower of Pisa are being inundated with suggestions from all over the world about how to save it from possible collapse. But a Government commission of scientists and engineers, set up to decide what action should be taken, has not examined any of these projects. The commission is preparing the terms and conditions of an official competition, expected to be announced with international publicity by the end of this year, inviting tenders for projects to guarantee the safety of Pisa’s outstanding landmark. Before they do this, the 20 experts on the commission, who include Professor Alec Skempton, of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, think that further study is needed to discover exactly how and why the tower leans.

Tourists visiting Pisa this summer and autumn will therefore probably see technicians boring holes near the round white marble tower, to a depth of 150 ft to get more information about the waterlogged soil on which it stands. Plans are also being made to X-ray the tower with sensitive equipment. Meanwhile the more than a thousand suggestions which have poured in on how to save the tower range from the ludicrous to highly serious blueprints. They are all sent on to Rome, where they are filling up cupboards and tables in a small office in the Ministry of Public Works.

Professor Gustavo Colonnetti, honorary president of the Italian National Research Council, has submitted a project to prop up the tower with a steel lever controlled by a hydraulic jack placed on a cement base south of the tower. Professor Colonnetti was one of the experts who recently raised alarm about the tower, saying that a wind storm might be enough to make it topple. But his project for stopping any further tilt has not been discussed by the commission, according to a Ministry official. All those who send in plans to save the tower receive a polite letter saying that the problem is still under study by the commission and inviting applicants to submit their suggestions again when the terms of the official competition are announced. Most suggestions have come from the United States, and include many plans for solidifying the soft soil on which the 15,000-ton tower is built. Some people want the tower to be pulled into the perpendicular as has been done in the Soviet Union with leaning minarets at Samarkand. But the people of Pisa, worried about their main tourist attraction, say that the tower was born with a lean and should keep it. British offers, the official said, have mainly come from building and engineering firms in search of a contract. Serious proposals have come from Czechoslovakia, India, Japan, the Soviet Union, Poland, West Germany and France. But officials decline to name their authors. Most From Tourists Most letters of all, however, have come from tourists who remember visiting Pisa during an Italian holiday. Suggestions include straightening the tower with pulleys, moving it stone by stone to

firmer ground, or threading steel poles through it. A man from Texas offered to send special plants which, grown round the tower, would strengthen the soil. Another American wanted a Statue of Liberty to be erected to hold up the tower. A business man offered to buy the tower and ship it to the United States for erection in his garden.

A woman from Scotland suggested that the ground should be gradually eased away under the elevated side of the foundations and the tower would then fall back into place. Experts say that the tower may last another 200 years before toppling. Others fear that the waterlogged ground upon which it stands may suddenly give way. Imm Increase

There seems to be no reason for immediate alarm. The latest measurements show that the tower’s lean increased by the average annual pattern of one millimetre in the last year.

The tower, now more than 16ft off centre, began to lean

after the first three porticoed storeys had been built in the 12th century. A century later, another four storeys were added at a slight angle from the tower’s lean, but this was insufficient to check the list. In 1300, the tower was completed with a graceful belfry. Since then, it has become one of the sights of Europe. An average of 250 visitors a day walk up its 293 steps and admire the adjoining cathedral and baptistery which, with the tower, make up the white marble Romanesque monuments of the Piazza of the Miracles. Past efforts to check the lean of the tower, including cement injections into its base in 1934, have failed. But the Italians are firmly determined to preserve the monument for future generations.