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The leaning tower of Pisa – Torre Pendente – is one of the world’s most famous monuments, but what do you actually know about its history?

Built over a period of two centuries, it was meant to serve as the bell tower of Pisa’s cathedral. The construction of the first floor started on August 9th, 1173, and by 1178 it had progressed to the third floor, at which point the building began to sink because of the mere three metre foundation in weak subsoil. At this point the work was put on halt for almost a century because of the wars Pisa was continuously fighting, and it is perhaps thanks to this period of rest that the subsoil managed to consolidate enough to hold the weight of the tower. The only change to the tower in this period happened in 1198, when clocks were temporarily installed on the third floor of the unfinished construction.

In 1272, construction resumed under the architect Giovanni di Simone. In an effort to compensate for the tilt, the engineers built higher floors with one side taller than the other. This made the tower begin to lean in the other direction. Because of this, the tower is actually curved. Construction was halted again in 1284, when the Pisans were defeated by the Genoans.

The seventh floor was completed in 1319. The bell-chamber was not finally added until 1372. It was built by Tommaso di Andrea Pisano, who succeeded in harmonizing the Gothic elements of the bell-chamber with the Romanesque style of the tower. There are seven bells, one for each note of the musical scale. The largest one was installed in 1655.

After a phase (1990-2001) of structural strengthening, the tower is currently undergoing gradual surface restoration, in order to repair visual damage – mostly corrosion and blackening. These are particularly strong due to the tower’s age and to its particular conditions with respect to wind and rain.

The leaning tower of Pisa is also connected to one of the most important discoveries in physics: in 1637 Galileo Galilei, arguably the most important Pisan ever, whom Albert Einstein considered the father of modern science, proved Aristotle’s teachings on gravity – according to which objects fall at a speed proportional to weight – wrong, by dropping a heavy and a light metal ball from the tower and demonstrating how they fell contemporaneously.

Today the tower is a reminder of how wonderfully intriguing and paradoxical Italy can be: the most famous monument in the hometown of one of the fathers of modern physics and of the laws of gravity has stood crooked for centuries – proving these same laws of gravity wrong – or at least showing how Italy is crazy enough to evade them.

—Camillo Mekacher Vogel