Second 'leaning' tower for Pisa

More than 600 years after the Italian city of Pisa’s most famous monument was built, construction starts in June of a modern glass and steel building that will simulate a tilt with a trick of lighting.

However, the project has stirred controversy, with opponents arguing its optical effect might make it too similar to the Italian landmark.

The building, designed by architect Dante Oscar Benini, will house apartments and offices about three miles south-east of the real Leaning Tower. The new construction will be exactly as tall as the original monument – 189 feet.

“I do not dare to go any higher than the original tower, but I simply offer a different visual angle onto the square,” Benini said from his Milan office. The architect’s works include a science centre in Hong Kong and another complex in Istanbul, Turkey.

“There is a sort of glass cover wrapping around the building which … together with natural and artificial light, makes the tower appear to be leaning,” he said.

Construction is expected to take two-and-a-half years, Benini said. The £35m (€51.3m) project also includes two smaller buildings in the same square.

However, some academics and local officials object to the idea.

“There are things that are so unique they can’t be replicated,” such as the Colosseum in Rome or the Rialto Bridge in Venice, which are all symbols of Italy, said Gioacchino Chiarini, the head of the literature department at the University of Siena.

Architect Bonanno Pisano began construction of the original tower in 1173 to celebrate the glory of Pisa, in those years a wealthy maritime republic. The soil beneath its foundations began sinking before workers completed the third level, starting its centuries-long famous tilt that prompted Mark Twain to once call the monument “the strangest structure the world has any knowledge of”.

The builders forged ahead, completing the tower in 1360, and by 1990, the tilt had worsened to such a degree that the tower was closed for years and an ambitious project began to alter some of the lean. Over the course of the renovation, engineers reduced the lean by 17 inches and guided the monument back to where it was in 1838. The difference is not visible to the naked eye.