PIAZZA DEI MIRACOLI, Leaning Tower

54 meters tall, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is undoubtedly one of the most famous monuments on the planet, and a true icon of Western architecture.

As you can imagine, part of its fame naturally comes from the fact that it's leaning, which certainly wasn't planned in its original design!

But you should know that the leaning issue had already emerged in the earliest stages of construction, which began in the second half of the 1100s. Documents about the tower mention a first soil collapse when the first floor had just been finished, which at that point didn't stop the works. They managed to complete two more floors before a new collapse of the soil forced the tower's construction to be interrupted, and it was only resumed at the end of the 1200s. The new architects of the 1200s also tried to solve the leaning problem: if you look carefully at the three top floors, you'll notice that they're slightly curved in the opposite direction, giving the building the characteristic profile that we could call "banana-shaped". The tower's construction was finally completed in the mid-1300s with the addition of the belfry. The interior, which you can access, has a spiral staircase with 294 steps....