The legendary Leaning Tower of
Pisa is stable and has slowly lost a tiny bit of its trademark
tilt, a group of researchers monitoring the Tuscan monument has
said.
The tower lost a reported 4cm of its tilt in the past 20
years and its health is better than forecast by an international
committee coordinated by Michele Jamiolkowski between 1993 and
2001, which planned and coordinated consolidation work, the
surveillance group led by Salvatore Settis, Carlo Viggiani and
Donato Sabia said on Tuesday.
The surveillance group has been monitoring the monument for
the past 17 years.
Nunziante Squeglia, a professor of geotechnics at the
University of Pisa who cooperates with the monitoring group,
said that the tilt has decreased thanks to stabilization work,
along with "oscillations now varying at the average of 1/2
millimeter a year, although what counts the most is the
stability of the bell tower, which is better than expected".
The group's activities, which are funded by the non-profit
Opera della Primaziale Pisana, include monitoring the tower and
improving the quality of conservation measures, as well as
promoting research on the monument.
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