The tower as it was left half-built for more than 100 years following the discovery of its alarming tilt. Left, at the most severe tilt in 1992 and right, after work corrected some of the lean Since then, work has succeeded in rectifying some of the tilt. The flawed design meant it had a foundation that was only three-metres deep and was set in weak, unstable subsoil.Īs a result, the project was abandoned and following Bonanno death in the year 1200, he never saw his project turn into the national treasure and international icon it is today.īut the weak ground continued to cause problems for the tower and its lean reached 5.5° by 1990. The issue was never with the tower itself, but with the land it was built on and its foundations. Leaning at up to 5.5° at its most wonky, the tower has since undergone immense restoration work to strengthen its foundations and secure it in place. His burgeoning emotions of pride and joy at his marvellous creation soon turned to despair and anguish as his beloved tower slumped to a precarious angle just five years after work began. Bonanno erected the tower certain of its great beauty and confident that it would be an incredible monument,' she said.īefore getting the commission to design the bell tower, he was best known for his work sculpting the bronze doors of Pisa cathedral. '' expresses all his pride at being the architect. Ms Ammannati, an expert in paleography, the study of ancient writing, tells The Telegraph that one word in particular exposes just how immensely proud the the ambitious architect was of his work - the adjective 'cèrtus'. Translated, this reads as: 'I, who without doubt have erected this marvellous work that is above all others, am the citizen of Pisa by the name of Bonanno.' Obscured over the 800 years since the tower's construction by erosion, the Latin inscription was incredibly faint - but not illegible.Īs well as his full name on the stone slab was the full inscription 'Mìrificùm qui cèrtus opùs condéns statui ùnum, Pìsanùs civìs Bonànnus nòmine dìcor'. When it was first discovered almost 200 years ago it was believed to come from Bonanno's sarcophagus.īut Ammannati's analysis discounted this possibility as the carved lettering was too long, with a further two lines of prose indicating there was more to the story. Giulia Ammannati, a Latin expert from the Scuola Normale Superiore, a prestigious university in Pisa, examined the stone inscription. He was first speculated to be the architect by Giorgio Vasari, the 16th century biographer for Renaissance artists who was a painter, architect and writer himself.īut his mysterious and relatively undocumented life gave birth to theories that others, including architects Gherardo di Gherardo and Giovani di Simone, were behind the project.

Builder leaning tower of pisa