Leaning awkwardly 5.5 degrees from the perpendicular, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is one of the most famous structures today. It begun from the bell tower in 1173 as the final structure of the Cathedral complex in the city and was designed to stand at 185 feet high made of white marble.

The Engineer in charge, Bonnano Pisano, tried to recompense for the leaning of the tower by structuring the new stories to be a bit taller on the short side, but to no avail. Even when the engineers suspended the job to look for viable solutions, the tower, finished in the 14th century still was leaning.

Cement grout was injected to strengthen the foundation of the tower and reinforcements, however, in the late 20th century, the tower was still continuing its leaning at a rate of 1.2mm per year until in the 1990 engineers made a major straightening project and was finished in 2001. By May 2008, the leaning of the tower stopped and a vast improvement of 48cm was observed.

The tower also had much history aside from its gauche structure. Allies during the World War II discovered the Nazis using the tower as an observation post. A rumor of Galileo Galilei dropping two cannon balls of varying masses in order to prove that the speed of descent was independent of their masses was spread, but was proven to be fictional.

During 1987, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was publicly announced as a part of the Piazza del Duomo UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the cathedral, cemetery and baptistery.

Pollux Parker is an adventurer who loves discovering secret island getaways in each country he visits. Pollux also likes to collect Italian flag and buy Italian flag for sale http://www.republic-flag.com/italian-flag.html.

----------------

Picture courtesy of Alkarex
The lean of this tower has been tried to fix several times. The most recent time I believe was in 2001 when they tried to drill into the ground and pour cement underneath the sandy surface.