The Leaning Tower Of Pisa isn't Italian just because it was built in Italy, It's Italian through and through. Its History, its Construction, its faults, and its beauty are all, just so very Italian!

1. Showing off
The Tower was designed to be a free-standing bell tower for the cathedral in the walled-in complex called Piazza Dei Miracoli or Miracle Square. The reason for its creation was because Pisa was becoming a powerful and prosperous city and they wanted to show off their wealth by constructing grand buildings, they also needed a place to display all the treasure and works of art they had pillaged from Sicily.

2. Unsound Foundation
The soil under the tower is a mixture of sandy and clayey silts, this material is very unstable, and considering the height of the water table and the height and weight of the tower, the foundations should have been made a lot deeper than the 3 meters they were, However, these weak, spongey foundations have actually saved the tower from falling in at least 4 occasions. Since the middle ages, there have been 4 severe earthquakes that, had the ground beneath the tower been harder would have shaken the tower to pieces but the softer soil under the tower actually absorbs the vibrations ensuring that the tower doesn't resonate with the earthquake.

3. Tranquillo.
Construction of the first stage was started in 1173 but then postponed for 60 years because of ongoing conflicts with Florence, Genoa, and Lucca. Construction of the second part started again in 1233 and continued to stop and start again until 1284 when the Pisans were defeated by the Genoese. In 1319, the seventh and final floor was completed but it wasn't until 1372, 199 years after construction had started the bell tower was added and the tower was finally completed. This being said, had the tower been built continuously without the decades of delays, it would have toppled over before completion. The delays gave the soil under the tower to consolidate under the weight of the tower, becoming stronger, before having to support more weight.

4. 7 Floors of Flaws.
The Tower of Pisa actually began to lean shortly after construction of the second floor started, and construction was stopped after the third floor was completed. After the 100 year break, they attempted to build more floors and correct the leaning problem by building one side slightly higher than the other, however, this only added more masonry and weight to the weakest side of the foundations causing the Tower to lean more! So now the tower was not only still leaning but it was also bent too.

5. Digging yourself into a hole.
In 1838, an Architect called Alessandro Della Gherardesca wanted to uncover the beautiful stonework at the base of the tower that, under the tower's 14,500 tonnes, had been pushed under ground-level. He decided to dig a trench all the way around the base of the tower, making the stonework visible once again, but this trench became flooded with water and that water, and the removal of soil from around the tower's base only caused its inclination to increase.

6. The bell tolls for whom?
The bell-chamber at the top of the tower is home to seven bells, one for each note from the major scale. The biggest bell and the last one to be installed is called L'Assunta and was cast in 1654 and weighs nearly 8000lbs (3620kg). The bells haven't been rung since the last century for fear that their motion and vibration could cause damage to the tower.

7. Pride.
The Italian Dictator, Mussolini, thought that this leaning and bent tower with all its mistakes wasn't good publicity for Italian engineering and craftsmanship and so he decided to correct it. He had engineers drill 361 holes into the masonry foundation on the weaker side and fill them with concrete. Ironically, this just made the weaker side of the foundation heavier and therefore the tower tilted even more!

8. Stabilizing the Tower.
By 1996 the tower was perilously close to toppling over so engineers from all over the world were called in to work out how to stop it. They decided that rather than try to correct or strengthen the weakest side like every other failed attempt before them, they'd do the complete opposite, they'd weaken the stronger side.

So it turns out that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was a tower that was supposed to be a showpiece! The tallest bell tower of its time! a masterpiece showcasing Italy's wealth, strength, and ingenuity but instead it's a tower that is neither straight, level, or particularly tall! It's full of erroneous architectural decisions and engineering blunders. It's a bell Tower that tolls no bell, and yet all those faults, all those errors, mistakes, and flukes that went into it, have given it something that almost every other building lacks, they've given it a personality, a soul, and that, is what makes it truly Italian!

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