Tower of Pisa leans a little less (but you’d hardly notice)

ROME— Italy’s famously Leaning Tower of Pisa is a little less off-kilter.

Nearly two decades after engineers completed consolidation work to keep the tower from toppling over, officials monitoring the monument said recently that its famed tilt had been further reduced by four centimetres.

The tower “is continuing to straighten,” said Nunziante Squeglia, an engineering professor at the University of Pisa and a consultant to the committee that monitors the tower.

The correction is the result of measures carried out just before the turn of this century to ensure that the tower would not collapse.

“We knew those measures would have protracted consequences,” Squeglia added, but engineers could not foresee that the tower would reverse its tilt, he said.

The tower, one of Italy’s most famous monuments, is also one of its most fragile.

Built as a bell tower for Pisa’s cathedral and baptistery, it began sinking into the ground five years after construction be- gan in 1173. The pillar took almost 200 years to build, and included various unsuccessful attempts to correct the tilt.

At some point over the centuries, its perilous slant made the tower — listed as 58.36 metres — a must-see attraction for visitors to Italy.

“Locals used to think of it as an architectural failure, then it was seen as a boon for the city,” said Gianluca De Felice, general secretary of the Opera Primaziale Pisana, the non-profit organization responsible for the monuments in Pisa’s so-called square of miracles, where the tower is located.

In January 1990, the tower was closed to visitors — around 800,000 a year — when officials became concerned about its long-term stability. It reopened 11 years later, after various methods to counteract the tilt managed to reduce it by 40.51 centimetres.

“We rejuvenated the tower by around 200 years,” bringing the incline to where it was around 1820, said Salvatore Settis, one of the members of the committee that oversaw the consolidation of the monument. “The good news is that the tower continues to straighten — if slightly,” he said.