Was the leaning tower of pizza built with a tilt?whats the story behind it?

Question

Was the leaning tower of pizza built with a tilt?whats the story behind it?

Answer 1

No...it was placed on a bad foundation and tilted over the years.

Answer 2

First of all, it's the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  If you do a search on the internet about it, I'm sure you will find your answers.

Answer 3

History

The construction of the Tower of Pisa was performed in three stages over a period of about 200 years. Construction of the first floor of the white marble campanile began on August 9, 1173, a period of military success and prosperity. This first floor is surrounded by pillars with classical capitals, leaning against blind arches. Today it is still unscarred from the weather and age.

There is controversy about the identity of the architect of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. For many years the design was attributed to Guglielmo and Bonanno Pisano, a well known twelfth century resident artist of Pisa, famous for his bronze casting, particularly in the Pisa Duomo. Bonanno Pisano left Pisa in 1185 to Monreale, Sicily, only to come back and die in his home town. His sarcophagus at the foot of the tower was discovered in 1820.

After the third floor was built in 1178, the tower acquired a lean, due to a mere three-meter foundation in weak, unstable subsoil. The design of this tower was flawed from the beginning. Construction was halted for almost 100 years because the Pisans were almost continually engaged in battles with Genoa, Lucca and Florence. This allowed for the underlying soil to settle, otherwise the tower would almost certainly have toppled. In 1198 some clocks were temporarily installed on the unfinished construction.

In 1272 construction was resumed by the Giovanni di Simone, architect of the Camposanto. Another four floors were built at an angle to compensate for the tilt. Construction again stopped in 1284, when the Pisans were defeated by the Genoans in the battle of Meloria.

Only in 1372 was the last floor, the bell-chamber, built by Tommasso di Andrea Pisano and bells installed. He 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.

Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped two cannon balls of different masses from this tower to demonstrate that their descending speed was independent of their mass. This story, though reported by Galileo's own student, is widely considered to be a myth.

In 1838 the architect Alessandro Della Gherardesca excavated a walkway around the tower to make the base of the tower visible again. This caused a flooding of the base and again an increase in the inclination.

Benito Mussolini ordered the tower be returned to a vertical position, so concrete was poured into its foundation. The results were unexpected and sank the tower further into the soft soil.

During World War II, the U.S. army destroyed nearly all towers in Pisa due to the potential threat from snipers. The Leaning Tower was scheduled to be blown up as well; a last-minute order to retreat prevented the destruction.

On February 27, 1964, the government of Italy requested aid in preventing the tower from toppling. A multinational task force of engineers, mathematicians and historians was assigned and met on the Azores islands to discuss stabilization methods. After over two decades of work on the subject, the tower was closed to the public in January 1990. In the time that the tower was closed the bells were removed to relieve some weight and cables were cinched around the third level and anchored several hundred meters away. Apartments and houses in the path of the tower were vacated for safety concerns. After a decade of corrective reconstruction and stabilization efforts the tower was reopened to the public on December 15, 2001. Many methods were proposed to stabilize the tower including the addition of 800 metric tons of lead counterweights to the raised end of the base. The final solution to correcting the lean was to remove 38 m3 of soil from underneath the raised end. The tower has been declared stable for at least another 300 years

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Technical information



View looking upGeographic coordinates: 43.7231° N 10.3964° E

Elevation of Piazza dei Miracoli: about 2 metres (6 feet, DMS)

Height: 55.863 meters (183 ft 3 in), 8 stories

Outer diameter of base: 15.484 m

Inner diameter of base: 7.368 m

Weight: 14,700 tonnes

Thickness of walls at the base: 8 ft (2.4 m)

Total number of bells: 7, tuned to musical scale, clockwise

1st bell: L'assunta, cast in 1654 by Giovanni Pietro Orlandi, weight 3,620 kg (7,981 lb)

2nd bell: il Crocifisso, cast in 1572 by Vincenzo Possenti, weight 2,462 kg (5,428 lb)

3rd bell: San Ranieri, cast in 1719-21 by Giovanni Andrea Moreni, weight 1,448 kg (3,192 lb)

4th bell: La Terza (1st small one), cast in 1473, weight 300 kg (661 lb)

5th bell: La Pasquereccia, cast in 1262 by Lotteringo, weight 1,014 kg (2,235 lb)

6th bell: il Vespruccio (2nd small one), cast in the fourteenth century and again in 1501 by Nicola di Jacopo, weight 1,000 kg (2,205 lb)

7th bell: Del Pozzetto, cast in 1606, weight 652 kg (1,437 lb)

Steps to bell tower: 294

Answer 4

The construction on the tower began in 1173.  After only three floors were built, it became obvious that the tower was leaning.  The soft soil on which is was built could not withstand the weight.  Construction stopped for 100 years in hopes that the soil would settle.  When work resumed, the Pisans tried to compensate for the lean, even though it produced a crook in the structure.  After the second third of the building was complete, they discovered that the tilt was even more pronounced.  Work again was halted for almost a century.  The tower was completed in 1350.

As time went on, the tower has literally been s******g itself into the ground, first leaning northwest, then north, to the east, and to the south where it slants today.

Answer 5

The leaning tower of PISA was built on sandy ground.  So as the architects and builders started, the construction shifted.  They compensated and the building shifted again.  

It is the bell tower for a church.  Here are a couple of links

Answer 6

The tower was built plumb but the foundation began to sink on one side causing the tilt.

Answer 7

the leaning tower of pizza was built 400 years ago...it was a tower made of hundreds of pizza, one on top of the other...but there was too much peperoni on the top one so the italian chef hid some under the first pizza, that's why it leans

Answer 8

For more information, go here..

http://torre.duomo.pisa.it/index_eng.htm...

Answer 9

The Leaning Tower of Pizza is an Italian restaurant and pizzeria which can be found in most moderate to larger sized cities.

LTP restaurants are NOT a chain, but just a sequence of ironically named pizza joints, usually started in the 1970's to 1980's.  The name became less popular as a start up venture in the 90's, and is now considered passe.

Answer 10

no, the leaning tower of pisa was not built with a tilt. it sank and leaned more and more over time because it was not totally secure in its foundations (I think). it will continue to sink more and more over time... yeah. if I am wrong I am very sorry but I think that is tha scoop on it!

Answer 11

Too much pepperoni!

Answer 12

Its the Leaning Tower of Pisa... Because its a tower that leans and its in the city of Pisa... Not Pizza...

It was built straight, but the soil under the tower was not really suitable for that heavy a structure so the soil gave and the tower started to sink and leaned in the direction that the soil was softest.

History shows that the location that the tower was built was actually landfill.  Not in the garbage type but in that it was filled in with dirt and the tower was not placed on the actual bedrock below.

Answer 13

The tower of Pisa was built and then the ground it was built on was not stable and it began to lean.  It could be fixed with today's technology but the "leaning" is such a large tourist attraction that they are going to keep it "leaning".

Answer 14

I believe the term is The Leaning Tower of Pisa, you sound retarded when you call it 'pizza'. When they built the tower, the soil was so soft that the building sank into the ground. it's not too hard to figure out.

Answer 15

It wasn't built tilted, it only sank after the construction was completed, as the soil was partially "soft".

Answer 16

The Tower of Pisa is the bell tower of the Cathedral. Its construction began in the august of 1173 and continued (with two long interruptions) for about two hundred years.

In the past it was widely believed that the inclination of the Tower was part of the project ever since its beginning, but it is not so. The Tower was designed to be "vertical" (and even if it did not lean it would still be one of the most remarkable bell towers in Europe.  It has seven bells, one for each note of the musical scale.), and started to incline during its construction.

Both because of its inclination, and its beauty, from 1173 up to the present the Tower has been the object of very special attention. During its construction efforts were made to halt the incipient inclination through the use of special construction devices; later colums and other damaged parts were substituted in more than one occasion; today, interventions are being carried out within the sub-soil in order to significantly reduce the inclination and to make sure that Tower will have a long life.

Answer 17

the leaning tower of pizza only started leaning after the teenage mutant ninja turtles started eating at the bottom layers.

Answer 18

I didnt know there was a pizza that was leaning. Id like to know that story too..........