Officials have announced plans to repair one of two 12th century towers in the Italian city of Bologna after the area around it had to secured last month over fears it could topple over.
The city said the €4.3m ($4.7m) project to shore up the Garisenda tower - one of the two towers that look out over central Bologna, providing inspiration over the centuries to painters, writers and poets - would proceed early next year. The tower is referenced in Dante's Divine Comedy, Charles Dickens wrote about it in his Pictures from Italy and so did Goethe in his Italian Journey.
The Garisenda, the shorter of two towers built between 1109 and 1119, stands at 48 metres (157ft) in height whilst the Asinelli tower is 97 metres (320ft). Both were built as lookout towers to help the city in times of conflict. Clearly, today, time is of the essence for the rescue mission as the Garisenda slants at 4 degrees, compared with 3.9 degrees for Italy’s more famous Leaning Tower of Pisa (where construction also began in the 12th century, but wasn't completed until the 14th). For context, the height of Pisa's tower is 55.86 metres (183 feet 3 inches) from the ground on the low side and 56.67 m (185 ft 11 in) on the high side.
The Garisenda and Asinelli towers are named after the rival families who built them, believed to have been a way to compete over their power and wealth, and are located at what was once the entrance to the city. The Garisenda was originally 60 metres tall but had to be lowered in the 1990s after it began to lean.
Whilst the fact that Italy has (at least) two leaning towers is beyond dispute, did you know that there are now claims that Leonardo painted more than one Mona Lisa. Some argue that the so called Isleworth Mona Lisa depicts Leonardo's subject in her younger years and is the first version of his famous work that now hangs in the Louvre. Others are less convinced. Are there two Mona Lisa's?