LEANING TOWER OF PISA

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 20

LEANING TOWER OF PISA

FEARS OF COLLAPSE It has been reported that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was beginning to lean more than ever (says the "Daily Telegraph"). Mindful of the fate of the Campanile of Venice twenty-five years ago, Italy appointed two Commissions to examine the danger at Pisa. The report is that at the moment, and in the immediate future, no disaster is to be feared, but the list of the Tower is slowly increasing, and to ensure its stability the base must be strengthened and the streams which flow . underground diverted. At the present time the Tower is some 14Jft out of the perpendicular. In 1800 the list was less than 13|ft. These figures are sufficient v roof of the need for watchful care. the Leaning Tower is not merely one of the wonders of the world, for its equilibrium between stability and instability; it is the noblest building of its kind. After the crash the Companile of St. Mark was rebuilt, to the general admiration. But that was a shaft of brick, and the arches and columns of the Tower at Pisa are all marble. It dates from 1174, it belongs to the golden age of the city, when she was indeed "the proud mart of Pisae, queen of the Western wave," when her fleets fought the battle of Christendom against the sea power of the infidel. Whether Bonnano and William of Innsbruck, who were the architects, meant their Tower to lean has been disputed, but the accepted theory now is that after building was begun the foundations on the south side sank, owing, no doubt, to that underground water against which precautions are now> seven centuries later, to be taken. Foundations were not the strong point of medieval architects. The foundations of the Leaning Tower, which is 180 ft high, only go down 10ft, and are no larger in circumference than the building above ground. When the Tower was up to the third story, the architects seem to have decided that it* must be given an inclination in the opposite direction to counteract the subsidence. Nearly two hundred years went by before the last arcade and the last column were wrought and the citizens could climb to the eighth story where the seven bells hang, and look out over that wonderful prospect of sea and river and mountain. But by that time the golden years of Pisa were over. In the strife of Emperor and Pope the city was wounded deep. Her trade rivals, Genoa and Florence, took the chance to strike at her. Malice domestic added its woes to foreign levy. And still, through generation after generation of disaster, thfe indomitable Pisans laboured on to make her city a treasury of art.