Leaning Tower of Pisa

Who would have thought that a major engineering mistake would lead to a huge tourist attraction? I wish my mistakes became this lucrative!

We decided to stop in to Pisa to see the famous leaning tower because it was on the way to Cinque Terre from Florence. Pisa is a fairly large city but it's only tourist attraction is the tower. So, of course they put the train station on the opposite side of the city and had tons of different shops on the road to the tower. We overheard some history from a nearby tour group. Apparently construction of the tower began in the 12th century and after building a couple of levels, they realized that the tower was sinking on one side. A few different engineers tried to solve the problem, but mostly they tried to reinforce the foundation, which just made it sink more. Finally they realized they needed to drain the moist earth around it, and make the ground more stable. I was surprised at how much it is leaning - it looks like it's about to topple onto the surrounding buildings.

 

We met a guy named Risto, from Estonia, on our way to the tower. Estonia is a tiny country between Finland and Russia. It was interesting talking to him about Estonia and the annoyance of having to do military service in a few years. We took pictures of each other trying to hold up the tower and ate lunch in the grass. Now I know why the tower hasn't fallen: there are tons of tourists there every day holding it up!

(angle exaggerated above ha)

 

- Andy