Have you even been to Italy if you didn’t get a slightly tacky picture of yourself ‘pushing over’ the Leaning Tower of Pisa? I think not!
The famous Tuscan bell tower sees millions of visitors a year and is a bucket list item for many, so it may come as a surprise to learn that the tower has been straightened up a little by engineers.
We’re not kidding, they’ve actually spent two decades trying to get the tower to stand a little taller, and have now recovered four more centimetres by using lead counterweights and extracting soil.
Why would they do this, you may ask? Isn’t the lean what it’s all about?
Well, according to Professor Salvatore Settis, this is actually the equivalent of taking 200 years off its age. And we all want the famous tilting tower to stay standing for many generations to come, right?
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A brief history for those who don’t know. In 1987 the Tower of Pisa was declared a World Heritage Site UNESCO, but as fears grew that it would topple over, meaning it was closed to the public for many years.
The lean is as old as the tower itself, having appeared five years after construction began in 1173 because the clay and sand the tower is built on is softer on the south side than the north.
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By the time builders got to the third storey, shifting soil had unsettled its foundations.
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