Facts about Leaning Tower of Pisa

The building complex consists, besides the bell tower (campanile), of:

• Duomo - Santa Maria Assunta
• the Baptistery of San Giovanni
• the cemetery Camposanto Monumentale.

The tower, the Baptistery and the Cathedral are located in a large square covered with green grass called Piazza dei Miracoli - the Miracle Square.

In 1063, Buscheto Pisano began constructing the cathedral - the first of the four buildings that form the city's architectural center. These buildings were built according to the best interpretation of Pisan Romanism. 

The Pisan Romanesque style was created by combining Eastern architectural and decorative elements with Western architectural elements (pointed arcades, decoration with white and black stripes, pilasters and rhombuses ), which brought a taste of the journey to the East on Pisan Romanesque.

Although the Latin inscription to the right of the entrance to the tower gives the date 1174, this refers to the Pisan calendar, which is one year longer than the Gregorian calendar.

It is built of white marble, has eight floors. Its weight is estimated at 14 thousand tons.

In the planning, the architects did not take into account that the terrain on which it was built was muddy and very unstable.

In its lowest part, there are wall columns with classical capitals and arches between them, decorated with concave rhombuses.

A similar fate befell many of Pisa's structures at this time.

However, this did not make the situation any better. Construction was halted at this stage, but in 1198 some bells were temporarily placed on the tower.

Pisa was then at war with Genoa, Florence and Lucca to defend the Republic's independence.

They were directed by Giovanni di Simone, the builder of the church of St. Francis and the Camposanto Monumentale (in this cemetery, the young Franz Liszt found inspiration for his immortal concerto "Totentanz").

He took over the construction of the tower from Bonanno Pisano.

Pisano, after his death, was buried at the foot of the Leaning Tower in a sarcophagus discovered in 1820.

At that time, Pisa suffered a humiliating defeat in a naval battle with Genoa.

It was added around 1350 by Tommaso Pisano. He combined the Gothic elements of the pediment with the Romanesque decoration of the building's main part.

The campanile reaches a height of 56,705 m and its deviation from the vertical increases by one millimeter per year.

In the 19th century, measures were taken to stop the tower's further tilting. However, they did not have the desired effect; the danger was so great that in the early 20th century, the bell tower was closed permanently. A special committee was formed to decide how best to prevent the tower's further tilting.

The restoration work was carried out by a team of experts led by Michele Jemiolkowski, professor of geotechnics at the Polytechnic University of Turin. They applied the method of reinforcing the foundation and preventing further tilting. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is guaranteed by the scientists to last for at least 300 years.

This nickname dates from ancient times, when the year in Pisa's religious calendar began on March 25 (the day of the Annunciation), rather than nine months later, as in the Gregorian calendar on Christmas Day. March 25 falls in the month of Aries, and the arrangement of all the buildings in Piazza dei Miracoli (Cathedral, Baptistery, and Campanile) resembles the constellation of Aries in shape.

Galileo dropped spheres of different masses from the Leaning Tower and measured their fall time. At the same time, he dropped two balls from the tower: a heavy cannonball with a mass of 8 kg and a lighter musket ball with a mass of 20 g. Both bodies (they had a similar shape) reached the ground at the same moment. He proved that the time of their fall was the same. This proof is one of the foundations of classical mechanics.

However, this event is questioned by some scholars and historians, although no one doubts that Galileo used balls rolling down an incline to study their speed and acceleration.

Just as the muezzins from the tops of minarets call the faithful to prayer, the sound of bells from the top of the tower calls Christians to their temples. Other historians claim that it was the adapted towers of Christian churches in Syria that were the first minarets.