Leaning Tower of Pisa loses some of its tilt

CNN News wire
TUSCANY, Italy — The Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy has slowly started defying its name, losing 4 centimeters of its tilt over the past 17 years.

Leaning Tower of Pisa and Pisa Cathedral in Italy with unrecognizable tourists for scale.

The movement, roughly 1.5 inches, comes after extensive consolidation work done between 1993 and 2001, which was required to reverse its slump and keep the tower upright.

It means the building in Tuscany, which attracts thousands of tourists every day, is back to the tilt it had at the beginning of the 19th century, according to professor Salvatore Settis, who leads the surveillance group of the monument.

“The reduction of the tilt will not last forever — but it’s very significant and now we have good reasons to hope that the tower can last for at least another 200 years,” Settis told CNN.

When corrective work began on the tower it was leaning 6 degrees, or 13 feet, off the perpendicular on its south side. Soil was removed on the opposite side to reverse its trajectory.

“Technically it has been an incredibly complex work — but the concept of the project is easy to understand,” Settis said. “The tower is leaning towards the South, so part of the soil under the northern side, basically sand and clay, was eliminated, creating cavities that the weight of the tower is now closing”.

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