The octagonal bell tower, the second most famous in the city after the Leaning Tower of Pisa is also slightly tilting. It is from the top of the Leaning Tower that Galileo Galilei supposedly carried out his experiments to prove the Laws of Gravitation. In Medieval times there was no unity in the metric system and each city-state, Florence, Pisa and Arezzo, had their own metric system with a different value for the braccio and other units. The Tower measures 58.36m in height, which appears to be a random number, but which actually corresponds to exactly 100 braccia pisane (Pisan cubits). Without these two century-long interruptions, which allowed the underlying soil to settle and the design to subsequently be adjusted, the tower would most probably have toppled. In 1278, when the seventh cornice had been reached, work was again suspended and only resumed in 1360. When construction resumed in 1271, engineers built the subsequent floors with one side taller than the other to compensate the tilt that had built up in the mean-time. In the mean-time the tower began to sink due to a poor foundatio n, set in weak, unstable subsoil.

The most famous of all leaning towers is, undoubtedly, the Campanile or Bell Tower of Pisa, located in Piazza dei Miracoli.Ĭonstruction of the Bell Tower began on August 9, 1173, but the works were interrupted for about a century at about one fourth of the fourth cornice. Four other tilting towers can be found in Bologna, Caorle, Burano and Rome.

Not surprisingly, Venice, with its unstable soil, also counts three leaning towers. Italy counts at least 10 leaning towers, of which two more are located in Pisa: the Campanile of San Nicola and the Campanile of San Michele degli Scalzi. While the Leaning Tower of Pisa is certainly the most famous tilting tower of Italy (if not world-wide), it is not the only Italian tower that was either intentionally or unintentionally constructed to not stand perpendicular to the ground.

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