ROME, Oct. 31 -- Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa was pulled one half inch back toward perpendicular after urgent remedial work on the 820-year-old tilting belltower, Italian media reported Tuesday. Experts rushed 150 tons of extra lead ingots to the 600-ton counterweight six weeks ago after the tower registered a sudden tilt.
The 185-foot Romanesque belltower, which leans about 16 feet off the vertical, has been under renovation for five years to prevent it from toppling over. Michele Jamiolkowski, head of a committee of experts charged with shoring up the famous tower, said the monument could be reopened to visitors within two years. But he said work would continue and that he would ask Cultural Heritage Minister Anotonio Paolucci for an 18-month extension of the restoration work. He said the previous six-month extensions had led to a piecemeal approach to righting Pisa's world famous landmark. Workers attached 600 tons of lead ingots to the base of the tower on the side opposite its lean a little more than a year ago to correct the tilt. Steel bands also have been placed around its circumference to prevent the masonry, which is taking the strain of the 15,000-ton monument, from bursting outward. Scientists said the remedial weight solution was working and that not only had the tower's lean been halted, but it had actually straightened it by at least half an inch. Pisa's clay soil is believed responsible for the tower's spectacular slope and various experiments, including freezing the earth with liquid nitrogen, have been used to reinforce the foundation. Construction of the tower, designed by Andrea Bonanno, began in 1174 but it was not completed until 1350.
