Weekly Online Lesson Online Lesson Archive Grade Level: 5-9 Subject: Geography

A New Lean on Life

The Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy opened its doors to the public on Saturday, June 17, 2000. A privileged group of 100 Pisa University students were allowed a guided tour of the famous medieval tower, which has been closed to visitors for over a decade.

Engineers have been working to stabilize, but not totally straighten, the 189-foot bell tower. At the start of the latest stabilization work it was leaning 16 feet from the vertical. The goal was to reduce the tilt by about 18 inches and restore the tower to its angle of 300 years ago.

Project officials plan to have the work completed by next spring. When they do, the monument will lean less than it did in 1700—enough to stabilize it, but not enough to notice a difference.

Why is the Leaning Tower of Pisa leaning? Why was it built? Why is it so famous? And where exactly is Pisa? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this week's online lesson.

La Torre di Pisa

The best place on the Internet to learn about the Tower of Pisa is the official Web site, La Torre di Pisa. Can you guess what that means in English? As you read the introduction you will learn that the tower was built as a bell tower for the Cathedral, and that the tower first started to lean hundreds of years ago during its construction.

To learn more about the history of the tower, click the History link on the left. Starting with The Site, read each of the short pages about the tower and it's construction. Pay close attention to The Inclination, which clarifies some of the issues surrounding the tower's lean, as well as past and present efforts to keep it from possibly collapsing.

If you're interested in engineering and the project underway to secure the tower, click the Poster link. You will see the numbers 1-14 on the left. Click each number (you don't have to read them in order) to learn about the project. Among others, click 5 to read a situation analysis, 12 to learn the structural problems of inclination, and 14 to learn about current interventions.

If you'd like to see what the Tower looks like from inside the belfry, click the QTVR Tower link. You will need QuickTime to view the pictures, which show a circle view. For a similar view from Pisa's Field of Miracles (the area surrounding the tower and cathedral), visit the Expedia site. And if you haven't seen enough pictures yet, visit the Tower's Gallery where you will find 6400 detailed images. Click Photographic Tour to browse them all.

Fall of the Leaning Tower

It hasn't fallen yet, but this Nova Online site includes resources and games related to the attempts to right the Leaning Tower. Start with Where it Stands Today, a two-page interview with John Burland, a member of the Pisa Commission in charge of saving the dangerously tilted structure. On the second page of the interview, you can see an animation of the Leaning Tower collapsing, something Burland is working to avoid.

Galileo conducted some ingenious experiments on gravity while at Pisa, though he may not have actually dropped cannon balls of different weight from the Leaning Tower, as some believe. At the Galileo Games page you can try three different Shockwave games about gravity. See if you can guess the correct answers, then try the experiment for yourself.

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