 (PISA, Italia, Saturday June 17 3:32 PM ET) The Times of London Open and Shut Case in Pisa  FROM JOHN PHILLIPS IN ROME THE leaning tower of Pisa will be opened to let visitors clamber up its 293 steps for the first time in 10 years today as engineers celebrate having reversed its dizzying inclination by nearly 5in. The opening will be for only a symbolic, single day to coincide with the solemn June 17 feast of the patron saint of Pisa, San Ranieri, and only 200 school students will be given access to the Romanesque belfry "because they are lighter", as Nerio Nesi, the minister for public works, quipped. Nevertheless the Tuscan city's authorities plan to open the marble tower to the public again in June next year. Work has begun on removing the 830 tonnes of lead attached to its base after the tower was closed 10 years ago to prevent it falling over. Strains of opera sung by the blind tenor Andrea Bocelli in a special concert to mark the re-opening of the tower will be broadcast to millions of Italians as the schoolchildren are accompanied by guides to enjoy the surrounding panorama in groups of 15 at a time. Engineers solved the problem by anchoring the tower with 300ft steel cables stretching across the Campo dei Miracoli square and using drills to remove 247cu ft of soil from the north side of its base. They have reduced the lean by 5in in five months and will have diminished the inclination by 17in when the repairs are finished next spring, said the head of a special Committee for the Safeguard of the Tower of Pisa, Professor Michele Jamiolkowski. |
 (PISA, Italia, Saturday, 16 June, 2000, 15:19 GMT) BBC News Saving the Leaning Tower 
By BBC News Online's Stephen Mulvey After 800 years in which the Leaning Tower of Pisa tilted steadily to the south, engineers have finally got it into reverse. Ten years ago the tower's movement, of roughly 1mm per year, had brought it to the brink of collapse and made it unsafe for tourists. But an international team of engineers has succeeded in correcting the tilt by a full 16cm in the last four years. A group of schoolchildren is being given a preview tour on Saturday and they hope to have straightened the tower by another 42cm before it opens to the public next year. Steel cables The engineers have used a variety of techniques. One of the first steps was to load the high, northern side of the tower with 800 tonnes of lead weights. A concrete ring was also placed around the base. Another key move was the fastening of steel cables to the third storey of the tower, tensioned by weights and hydraulic pistons, to stabilise it while other work is carried out. But the most important measure is the removal of soil from under the northern side of the tower. The engineers have inserted a number of corkscrew drills at a shallow angle into the earth beneath the tower. These will be used to remove, very slowly, 30 tonnes of subsoil. The weight of the tower will cause it to sink into the cavity, resulting in a small corrective movement. The work began in February after trials, and has already been shown to bring results. However one of the experts involved in the work, Professor John Burland of Imperial College, London, warns that it is too early to claim victory. "I get information every single day and issue instructions every single day," he told the BBC. "We have to be very alert and very vigilant - we have got a long, long way to go... "You don't wave a flag and shout that you have climbed Everest when you are only a third of the way up." The head of the engineering team, Professor Michele Jamiolkowski, echoed his words, telling the La Repubblica newspaper: "Fear is part of our job... Every time we touch the tower we get scared."  Tower facts Height: 60m Girth: 19.6m Mass: 14,500t Tilt: 5.5 degrees Commenced: 1173 Subsidence 1.86m (north) and 3.75m (south) No visible change The correction made so far has returned the tower to the angle it was tilting at in 1870. However the change will not be visible to the untrained eye. The cornice at the top of the seventh storey - just below the belltower - will still overhang the cornice at the top of the first storey by roughly four metres. The engineers hope it will stay in this position for two or three centuries - whereas in 1990 experts predicted it would collapse within two decades.  Professor Jamiolkowski: fear comes with the job Artistic restoration. It is possible that some steel cables will have to remain even after the structural restoration is completed. Measures have also been taken to stabilise the masonry around the level of the first cornice, as the tilting has altered the cross section of the wall. By an unfortunate coincidence the internal spiral staircase passes through the wall at exactly this point. In addition to the structural restoration, the Italian Culture Ministry's Central Institute of Restoration is also planning an artistic restoration of the tower's ornate surface. While the latest efforts to stabilise the tower have been successful, earlier efforts only made matters worse. By disturbing the subsoil, engineers accidentally accelerated the leaning process. |
