INTRODUCTION: The Leaning Tower of Pisa is a building in Pisa, Italy. It is a bell tower. It is famous because it leans to one side. The tower was once leaning more and more to the ground, but recently a lot of restoration work has been done to stop it from falling over completely. There was scaffolding all around the tower for 20 years. On 26 April 2011the last bit of scaffolding was removed so that the tower can be seen properly again. The height of the tower is about 55 metres from the ground. Its weight is about 14,500tonnes. It now leans at about 3.99 degrees. The tower has 294 steps. After the third floor was built in 1178, the tower started to lean, due to having a small three-meter foundation in soft soil. The design of this tower was bad from the beginning. Construction was stopped for almost 100 years because the Pisans were often at war with Genoa, Lucca, and Florence.
CONSTRUCTION: Construction of the tower occurred in three stages across 177 years. Work on the ground floor of the white marble campanile began on August 8, 1173, during a period of military success and prosperity. This ground floor is a blind arcade articulated by engaged columns with classical Corinthian capitals.
ALTERNATIVE CANDIDATES: Two German churches have challenged the tower's status as the world's most lop-sided building: the 15th-century square Leaning Tower of Suurhusen and the 14th century bell tower in the town of Bad Frankenhausen. Guinness World Records measured the Pisa and Suurhusen towers, finding the former's tilt to be 3.97 degrees. In June 2010 Guinness World Records certified the Capital Gate building in Abu Dhabi, UAE as the "World's Furthest Leaning Man-made Tower". The Capital Gate tower has an 18-degree slope, almost five times more than the Pisa Tower; however the Capital Gate tower has been deliberately engineered to slant. The Leaning Tower of Wanaka in New Zealand, also deliberately built, leans at 53 degrees to the ground.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9AwSxfR0Ms&feature=relat ed
Por:
Alba Chamoso, Sara GarcĂa y Eva Noriega.