Failure™ Magazine

Lean Into It

A new slant on the Tower of Pisa.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Science & Technology

What happened on September 6, 1995?
Among engineers and architects involved in the most recent restoration the date has become known as Black September. In the midst of works to install underground cables to anchor the campanile the structure suddenly lurched four millimeters to the south. The distance may appear a trifle, but in fact, it was theoretically enough to push the Tower over the edge.

Prior to the most recent intervention what factors contributed to the Tower’s risk of collapse?
Undoubtedly the shifting terrain but also the structural stress on the deteriorating stone and marble. The Tower was less at risk of cleanly falling over than of buckling at points where the pressure was greatest and the stone weakest.

Did Galileo [Galilei] ever conduct experiments from atop the Tower or is that a myth?
There is no hard evidence to support the almost universally held claim. The myth first emerged as a result of the overripe imagination of Galileo’s secretary and first biographer, Vincenzo Viviani. The image of Galileo atop the Tower proved so compelling that nearly every subsequent biographer incorporated the myth, in various guises, as a pivotal event in the life of the scientist, and indeed, the whole history of modern science.

By what method was the Tower stabilized in the 1990s?
By a method known as soil extraction, or soil subsidence, in which earth was excavated from beneath the foundation on the north side in order to gently coax the structure back toward the perpendicular.

As of today, what is the long-term prognosis for the Tower?
Engineers responsible for the successful restoration effort estimate that the Tower will be stable for another 300 years, but bear in mind too that natural causes such as an earthquake (and Pisa is in a region of considerable seismic activity), could do in the Tower in an instant.

Tell me about the decision to skew the cover and pages of the book.
First of all, let me apologize for the havoc the book wreaks on ones bookshelf! However, the book, like the Tower, does manage to stand on its own, if just. The skewed format was the idea of the designers and marketing department at Simon & Schuster. In any other instance, I would have thought the idea preposterous, but for a book on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, it reminds one just how skewed things can be.

Official Web site of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

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