DAY 78: LEANING ON PISA

THE only consolation was that we looked a silly as everyone else.

So when in Pisa (as in Rome), you do what everyone does: take photos of yourself pushing the Leaning Tower upright, serving it like a wedding cake on a platter, kicking it straight and leaning casually against it.

Yes, you couldn't walk five metres without someone making a comical pose, getting it wrong and repeating the photo again and again until model and photographer got it just right. 

But the real star of the show, like any real star of the show, didn't have to do anything but stand - eh - lean there and look good.

The peculiarity of the tower has become the beauty of the tower.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the separate bell tower of the city's cathedral.

Although work began on-site in August 1172, stoppages due to wars and earth subsidences meant construction continued on and off for 200 years until the opening in 1372.

The 56m Romanesque tower has become famous around the world because it has leaned to one side virtually since construction - although it was meant to be perfectly vertical all along.

The circular bell tower in white marble has eight storeys, including the bell chamber.

The bottom storey has 15 marble arches. The next six storeys each have 30 arches and the bell chamber has 16.

For those game enough to defy gravity and the odds, the top of the tower can be reached by 294 steps of a spiral staircase inside.

The tower is actually one of four buildings (also including the cathedral and a baptistry plus a cemetery) in the precinct called "The Miracle Square", around an emerald green lawn. 

The UNESCO World Heritage site, Piazza del Duomo di Pisa site represents a single design concept that, as an information board outlines, creates a "dialogue between heaven and earth".

The area also boasts market stalls, cafes, ristorantes and bars to entice the tourist euros.

Our Globus tour guide Simonetta tells us that the area was known to be badly waterlogged from the beginning.

The first three storeys were finished and then the first subsidence in the earth occurred. Work stopped for 90 years until another architect was appointed to finish the project.

Subsidences and attempts at correction (including unsightly weights and cables) have occurred throughout the centuries, but the best intervention was done in 2001 when slices of soil were cut on the opposite side to create a kind of backward leaning. 

Simonetta says Italians joke that "she had her lifting done" and now looks 200 years younger.

Lesson of the day: Don't worry if you embarrass yourself overseas. You probably will never see these people again. And if you do, you'll always have something funny to talk about that no one else knows.

Bidet count: Goes up almost daily. 

   

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