  (PISA, Italia, Wednesday 14 June 2000) Il Messaggero Marvel of the world, but Without Visitors Difficultly, the public at large will return to the top of the Tower. In the last year that it was open (it closed at 15.25 on January 7 1990), there were more than a million visitors: but in the future, who knows? "A philosophical problem exists, and another is tied up in safety", says Viggiani; "there are those who maintain that towers are made to be admired from below; I think instead that that of Pisa gives feelings absolutely opposite"; but "up to 1990 the visits occurred in conditions of considerable precariousness, and today probably no more are admissible, nor legal". Among the assignments of the "Jamiolkowski commission" there is only the authority to advise, "which we will give"; but to decide, there will be others: perhaps, the officers of the City. After all, the loggias are not wider than a meter; they are missing the parapets; and more, "the same inclination of the Tower also risks the play of ugly jokes". But, even now without visitors, the structure will remain among the great wonders of the world: in only thirteen days of opening during the war, 3,300 anglo-Americans soldiers would not leave it to escape; and an Ausralian credit card has chosen it, along with Big Ben from London, the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House, to represent the world in its publicity. It has been photographed millions of times, and overlooking the cathedral from the inside of its entrance doorway, the foreshortening seems absolutely unreal. On top, those leaning with their shoulders on the wall, can not avoid putting a foot ahead that compensates the unbalance of the body. Finally, from here, Galileo Galilei, in 1590 a lecturer at the local university, dropped two wooden spheres experimenting on the force of gravity; then, but only very later, would Isaac Newton continue the same experiment. |
(PISA, Italia, Wednesday 14 June 2000) Il Messaggero Mission Impossible/Tower Rejuvenated by 130 years by Fabio Isman The Tower has recovered 17 centimeters of inclination. "In 2001 it will finally be secure" The last miracle of the Tower of Pisa On Saturday, the festival of St. Ranieri, patron of the city, some Pisan students will climb the Tower, in an almost symbolic way: ten years ago, when one of the most recognized emblems of Italy was closed to the public, the last ticket of entry was sold to another student, except that one was from Bergamo. And the day after tomorrow, on top of 239 stairs, in the cell with the seven bells of Five, Six and Seven hundred years old, that reproduce seven notes, that have not been played regularly since 1935, and until 1964 operated only by hand and later electrically, then reduced to silence in 1993, the minister of the Public Works, Nerio Nesi, will hold an unusual press conference in rotation: a few journalists at a time. It will unfold as incredibly as the Tower of Pisa continues to lean, without "ever going down"; it will recover 45 centimeters of its dangerous lean, almost five meters, and it has already earned 17 of it; in not even six months it has been ejuvenated at least 130 years, and to those who know how many men would like the formula: "Today, we are at the situation of 1870; when the job is finished, within a year, we will arrive at the conditions of Seven hundred years ago", says Charles Viggiani, a Neapolitan engineer who for 35 years devoted himself to this most audacious construction of the Middle Ages. Viggiani is part of the special group direected by a Polish professor with an impossible name, Michele Jamiolkowski, who teaches at the Polytechnic of Turin; "many of us are from the South, and we don't love to think of us: but we are 13, and there have been 17 commissions; the first was in the 1292: three people who measured for plumb and implemented verbal regulations", says Viggiani; and these thirteen have saved the ancient 14,453 ton Tower eight centuries: "they restored only 40 to 80 years of life, and not more", the teacher from Naples appraises. A miracle in Piazza dei Miracoli (Field of the Miracles), among the most famous in the world; for which is initiated a definitive intervention, that from February, recovered 14 centimeters already, add three from the period 1996-1997; "in 1993, it leaned five and a half degrees; in 2001, it will be half a degree better and will have guaranteed the life for at least other 200, or 250 years", explains Jamiolkowski. From 1993, he and the other twelve have tried all: they have discarded the Russian and Chinese proposals (cut it at the base; construct a twin that "pulls" from the other side), and the idea of the Japanese to take it down and rebuild it correctly; creating physical models in Italy and in England, and verified the characteristics of "load" on the soil next to the building, or to make the clay soil contract with electric current ("even a field-test in the piazza; however, they had doubts about the secondary effects", says Viggiani); And in the end, they have decided to "remove soil from the North side, inducing a yelding from the opposite side, that reestablishes the equilibrium. But first, to avoid surprises", tells Jamiolkowski, "we thought about the suspenders": those connecting steel cables, a diameter of ten centimeters and one hundred meters long, that "restrain" the Tower; and 830 tons of lead: a counterweight so that the ground doesn't yield any more. Everything will be removed within a year: "To St. Ranieri, we will return the monument to his city"; then, the masonry restoration will be completed, managed by the central Institute from Rome. An intervention so arduous it has had rare precedents in the world; "and nobody", Viggiani says, "in delicate conditions like that of Pisa": in China, to save a tower of 1559; in Mexico City, after the earthquake, for the Cathedral. But it was indeed not to be ignored. The first yelding of the alluvial ground, founded in 1173 (perhaps by Bonanno Pisano), after only 12 years, while it was still being built: when it was only at the third story of seven, the Tower began to lean; the work was again suspended in 1284: already 90 centimeters of lean; a meter and 43 centimeters in 1350, when it was finished by Tomasso Pisano. But in this century, as water was "sucked" from the stratum by perforations and drilling, the inclination grew year by year; a graph makes the hazard obvious: terrible remedial work about 1935, and again between 1970 and 1975; sometimes, human improvidence is even worse than the war: three cannon rounds were aimed at the Tower in 1943; a great deal worse happened to the Cemetery, destroyed by a fire in the night of July 27 1944. "At the conclusion of the work, to the naked eye, there will not be any perceived difference", explains Jamiolkowski. It will seem the same leaning Tower as always: a cylinder built in white marble, with a helical staircase on the inside, 60 meters tall and a diameter of 20 at the base; some elements replaced, here and there, as a matter of restoration; stirrups that anchor structurally; numerous repairs of the degraded marbles, some water stains. But, in the end, it will finally be secured, thanks to an oblique perforation that removes earth under its base: an enterprise so difficult, that those who decided on it are recognized for their courage. "A virtue that many concerned with science, don't get to practise", concludes Viggiani. For those 13, the calculations were common, even boring, with iron clad certainty: that it was owed; that it was possible; that it had to succeed. Bravo. |
