First, a little history. A bell tower, or campanile, built near their handsome cathedrals, was considered essential to an Italian city of the 12th century. The city of Pisa is in the province of Pisa in the Tuscany region, in northwest central Italy, wanted and built what became a troubled tower. Also essential to these city-states it seems was conflict with others over trade, access, and influence. Pisa had mini-wars with Florence and Genoa. These, along with construction problems, caused long interruptions during the 1173 - 1350 period during which the eight-story tower was built. By the fifth year, ground settling had caused a tilt in the structure, then three stories high.

Ground level correction attempts failed, so by the fifth level extra stonework was being added on the lean side to straighten the upper levels. Guess what. It was heavier on that side and continued leaning. The first of 7 bells was added in 1262; it weighed just over a ton. The other 6 bells were finished by 1721 and added more than 10 tons. Total tower weight is 16.2 million tons; height is 183 + feet; lean is about 15 degrees southward.

Other than attracting tourists, one function of a leaning tower was to serve as a drop-off point. Legend has it that Galileo used the tower in 1564 to disprove Aristotle’s theory that objects fall at speeds proportional to their weight. A fact is that the legend is wrong, that it had been disproved 11 years earlier elsewhere, and that Galileo wrote about it later. But the legend stands, as does the tower, gradually leaning more.

Over the intervening centuries, until modern times, attempts to halt and correct the tilt have been largely unsuccessful. When Mussolini ordered it stabilized in 1934, 361 holes were bored into the foundation into which 90 tons of cement were poured (from a cement factory he owned). But it was not stabilized. (The area is a former bog, renamed the “Field of Miracles”, perhaps in divine expectation that the ground would act accordingly.) So adding uneven weight does what you’d expect. Tilt had been increasing at the rate of 0.2 inches per year. The tower was closed to the public for 11 years in 1990. Now, modern methods of gently excavating subsoil from beneath the north side have coaxed a return of more than 17 inches, back to the inclination it had in the year 1700.

So now back to this account on this occasion. In my checkered past I was VP for Project Development in a young and jaunty firm called Chicago Construction Services. That was in the period when Pisa was deeply concerned about the previous failures in tower stabilization. They had sent out what we call Requests For Proposals, RFPs, aiming at tower salvation. That came to my division; we took it on and sent a team over to assess the situation and prospects.

As was our practice, we made contact with the local, regional, and national groups concerned. We played patty-cake with each, stating our proposed methods, costs, and requirements. In our proposal, basically, we were to use a gigantic custom-fitted nylon net. It would be carefully placed around the southern side of the tower, top to bottom, with the numerous edge anchors carefully adjusted for a uniform, gradual pull toward the north by heavy winches. With expert model makers and exacting photos we built a scale model out of many hundreds of miniature plastic “stone” blocks and column components. Using a model net we developed the necessary gradual movement with great care, paying suitable attention to the model’s foundation and surrounding “soil”. We very, very gradually righted the tower.

We were delighted. So were the University of Pisa’s School of Architecture and Department of Mechanical Engineering. However, the Scrivania di Architettura and Ufficio di Turismo, the bureaus concerned politically, were horrified. They had hundreds of thousands of tourists to consider. They were drawn to the tilt, excited by it. Many other Italian cities had bell towers, all upright and relatively tame.

So one might say we overlooked the obvious. We, as products of Western culture, proposed a remedy. All they wanted was a palliative. We went too far. Our project was rejected.

But we had a record of our intended accomplishment and photographs to show for it. Subsequently, I moved up and out of CCS. I still maintain a fond remembrance of this project in particular and present a pair of photos on this occasion, April 1, 2007, showing the Before and After conditions.

Dave Uffer, member of the Chicago Computer Society, currently resides in Chicago Metro in a calmer stream of life. To sceptics who might question how the After image was achieved in this case, he claims that the tower portion of the photo was isolated and appropriately rotated, revealing the building structures previously hidden behind the tilt. Simple.

This article has been provided to APCUG by the author solely for publication by APCUG member groups. All other uses require the permission of the author (see e-mail address above).

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