Countdown to Recovery of the Tower

 Il Tirreno Giornale
(PISA, Italia, Saturday 17 June 2000)   







Nesi and the Mayor under the Tower (Photo Muzzi) 



Within a year the reopening to the public.  But minister Nesi warns
"The main point is that the Tower is solid, not that the tourists can climb"
The authorities and Carla Fracci on the famous monument. And today the students climb. 



by Anthony Scuglia 





PISA. Only 18 were admitted when minister Nesi, Carla Fracci, and the authorities, with a  group of journalists, got on the Tower (prcisely up to the second storey). Today the students will climb, and within a year, if there aren't delays, the first tourists with the guides will be able to enter the Tower.  But will it last? The question is not rhetoric, since the same minister in the press conference has dampened the enthusiasm.

"My impression is that the Tower offers a sight from the base", he says, "I don't believe it is necessary for us to climb to appreciate it. But the decision won't be from the minister, rather the local authorities. And then, what really matters is that the monument is preserve in its stability, not that we climb".



A declaration that would leave few hopes to all those people who, from each part of the world, in the next years want to admire the fantastic panorama that the Tower offers, and also to the Work of the Primaziale that, in 1990, before the closing, drew more than three billion lire ($1.5 million US) per year from the tickets to get on the monument: tickets whose revenue could become much greater (a price of 50,000 lire ($25 US)has been proposed).



A little later however the same minister, after he descended from the Tower, has corrected the statement.  "I don't want to generate controversy," he declared to the microphones of RAI: "what interests me really is that the Tower remains standing forever, it is the conservation of a patrimony of humanity. I don't intend to say that there is no need to visit it".



The minister, like the other visitors, has appeared rather excited after having gotten on the monument, that he visited for the first time in his life, together with the prefect.   He was accompanied by the mayor, the members of the Committee, and the president of the Work, Pacini, with an ethereal Carla Fracci, almost evanescent, so thin in a candid suit.



To see Piazza dei Miracoli from the top, the green meadow with the other monuments, drawing tourists from all the world with noses turned up does leaves a certain impression indeed. The history and narrow stairs, the strange feeling that the strong inclination gives on the inside of the monument, are arduous things to describe, and honestly difficult to deny, to the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people, who in all the continents know at least one of the most famous and beautifulk monuments on the planet. And after ten years of closing, of "odyssey" as mayor Fontanelli has defined it, the impression is even stronger.



The press conference, afterward, in the reception room of the Primaziale, has attracted journalists and photographers from all of Europe: many competent questions from the English, Dutch, German and local colleagues for professor Jamiolkowski and minister Nesi, who respond with reassuring answers. A beautiful video projected during the presentation and the questions: 14 minutes of film with images from a helicopter and from the Tower, prepared by Fred Fazzuoli, presented yesterday together with the exceptional Fracci christening. But the principal news is that the work seems to go toward an elegant good end: if all ok, within a year the Tower will no longer be a monument imprisoned with cables and a workyard. Between the end of March and  the  beginning of May 2001 the Tower will be "freed".  Next St. Ranieri day, will see it returned to Pisa and to the world.








Subexcavation at the Tower (Photo Muzzi) 




Tickets will be very pricey

Fontanelli promises a grand initiative for 2001




PISA.  Pierfrancesco Pacini, president of the Primaziale Work, did the honor of presenting Carla Fracci to the authorities and to the journalists: a long applause greeted the arrival of the artist.  "It is an important day,"- remembered Pacini "also because within a year, on St. Ranieri Day 2001, we foresee the reopening of the Tower and the first guided groups will visit it".  



By the way: will the ticket indeed cost 50,000 lire?  "It is a hypothesis", Pacini answers, "only a nod, what is sure is that the visits will be regulated, only with guides and for groups, in total safety".  And since the safety has a cost, it is obvious that the ticket of entry won't be sold at popular prices.



Mayor Paul Fontanelli has made a salute and welcomed all to the city. "It is an important occasion to tell Pisa and the world that the work of consolidation is going well and within a year it will be finished.  The Tower is a treasure of the humanity. All the world looks at us, it is enough to know that the Internet site of the Tower has already had had more than a million contacts. The principal question is not so much if we will get on the Tower, but if its great patrimony will be saved. It is a momunent to safeguard forever.  And for it is concern for the community, I promise the appropriation of a big initiative as soon as the workyard is dismantled. The Tower has had a long odyssey, but it is about to arrive at the end".



What initiative?  According to Pacini, a big concert, perhaps by Pisan Andrew Bocelli, to celebrate the return to life of one of the seven wonders of the world.



Meanwhile professor Michele Jamiolkowski has announced that the work continues on the removal of the antiesthetic lead ingots that have, and continue to, provide counterweight to the Tower. They have served an important function, but now they can be removed, with caution. They will be removed at the rate of two or three per week.  If everything goes well, as it seems, this Polish engineer, a teacher at the Polytechnic of Turin, will go down in history as the savior of the Tower of Pisa. 



An English journalist among the others has asked him yesterday, in the press conference, if there has not been a moment in which he has been afraid of being remembered as the one who destroys the monument. "No fear of that kind, but there have been many worries".  Not last, he remembered, that deriving from so many interruptions due to bureaucratic obstacles and lack of funds: two years of ten have been lost. In any case, the teacher has announced that his committee will leave the minister a "technical description" in which all the work tasks are outlined and in which a series of precautions are pointed out.



For one thing, he will consult with the office of Public Works to monitor the Tower for ten years. Jamiolkowski is convinced that the monitoring will confirm the stability of the monument, but it is better that the controls are there, and that they are accurate.