The Leaning Tower of Pisa Stays up for the Same Reason It Leans
Engineers and scientists have been fascinated by the unusual structure for half a millennium
By Kat Eschner
Earthquakes, Mussolini, two hundred years of construction misadventures — the Leaning Tower of Pisa has kept standing through it all. New research from a European team of engineers sheds light on why: Though the tower’s signature lean is the result of an interaction between its foundation and the too-soft soil it stands in, that interaction has also kept it up in the most perilous of situations.
A number of earthquakes have struck the Pisa region in the years since construction on the Tower began in 1173. Although historical earthquakes are a bit harder to track than modern ones, historian Romano Camassi writes that earthquake records in Italy goes back as far as the Romans. Because the country is located on multiple fault lines, earthquakes have played an important part in its history. However, none of them — including the four major earthquake events mentioned in a University of Bristol press release about this new research — caused the Leaning Tower to fall.
“Ironically, the very same soil that caused the leaning instability and brought the Tower to the verge of collapse, can be credited for…
