Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Stabilizing the
According to Burland, J. B., Jamiolkowski, M., & Viggiani, C. (1998), the stabilization of
the Tower of Pisa has been a very difficult challenge for geotechnical engineering. The Tower is
founded on weak, highly compressible soils and its inclination has been increasing inexorably over
the years to the point at which it was about to reach leaning instability. Any disturbance to the
ground beneath the south side of the foundation is very dangerous; therefore the use of
conventional geotechnical processes at the south side, such as underpinning, grouting involved
unacceptable risk. The internationally accepted conventions for the conservation and preservation
of valuable historic buildings, of which the Pisa Tower is one of the best known and most treasured,
require that their essential character should be preserved, with their history, craftsmanship and
enigmas. Thus any intrusive intervention on the Tower had to be kept to an absolute minimum and
permanent stabilization schemes involving propping or visible support were unacceptable and in
any case could have triggered the collapse of the fragile masonry.
In 1990 the Italian Government appointed an International Committee for the safeguard
and stabilization of the Tower. It was conceived as a multidisciplinary body, whose members were
experts in arts, restoration and materials, structural engineers and geotechnical engineers. After a
removal of small volumes of soil from beneath the north side of the Tower foundation (under
excavation). This technique provided an ultra-soft method of increasing the stability of the Tower,
which is completely consistent with the requirement of architectural conservation. The paper
reports the analyses and experimental investigations carried out to explore the applicability of the
procedure for the stabilization of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. All the results having been
satisfactory, the actual under excavation of the monument was carried out in the years 1999-2001;