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Why the Leaning Tower of Pisa never fell

Early attempts to fix the Leaning Tower of Pisa made the lean worse.

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The real story

The tower stands on soft clay, sand and silt, and began tilting within five years of its start in 1173. Wars with Genoa and Florence stopped work for almost a century, which turned out to save it: the soil had time to compress under the weight. Later builders curved the upper floors slightly to compensate, which is why the tower is subtly banana-shaped.

In 1934 Mussolini's engineers drilled holes and injected concrete into the foundation, and the tower leaned even more. It was closed in 1990 when the lean reached about 5.5 degrees. A team led by soil engineer John Burland stabilised it by stacking lead weights and then slowly extracting soil from under the high side, pulling it back about 44 cm to roughly 4 degrees. It reopened in 2001, and the team left it leaning on purpose.

What the narrator says

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The facts we checked

  • Construction of the tower began in 1173; it started to lean by the time the third floor was built, because of soft ground
  • Wars paused construction for about a century, which let the ground settle; the tower was finished about 199 years after it began
  • Engineers closed it from 1990 to 2001 and straightened it by about 44 cm (lean cut from 5.5° to about 4°) — not all the way

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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