We hadn't planned to stop in Pisa during our recent trip to Italy, but we ended up there in an effort to avoid rainy weather. I'm glad we stopped because it proved to be quite interesting. I was quite taken back by the amount of lean in the leaning tower of Pisa. I knew it leaned, but not to the extent I witnessed during our visit. But most interesting to me became obvious as we entered the walled city. There are other leaning buildings in Italy and the first one we saw was on the same grounds as the tower, the baptistry. It was a large circular structure with a domed roof and it leaned. The tilt was not as much as the tower, but it had an easily visible lean. I began wondering if they fired the engineer/architect. The Pisa baptistry would not be the only leaning building. We later saw a tower in Venice with a definite tilt and again in Rome. The last interesting peace of information was the tower in Pisa began to lean during construction so they tried to correct it. Instead of doing something with the foundation to stand the building upright, they started correcting the building somewhere in the middle to bring the floors closer to level. If you take a good look at the tower you can see that the top of the building begins to straighten up. It was all very fascinating and I have to say I'm very happy with our decision to visit Pisa, Italy. It was well worth the change in plans.

If you would like to know more about Ted York Photography please click here.