Repairs to stop the collapse of a medieval leaning tower in the centre of a northern Italian city will take at least 10 years and cost 20 million euros ($33 million), a top official says.
The mayor of Bologna gave details about the scale of the work to prevent the 12th-century Garisenda tower from falling down after local authorities launched a civil protection plan for the ailing structure, reports the Reuters agency.
The Garisenda leans at an angle of four degrees – only a little more upright than the Leaning Tower of Pisa’s five degrees.
“I think we will spend no less than 20 million euros, maybe more” to restore and consolidate the tower,” mayor Matteo Lepore was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying in a media conference.
“For the tower of Pisa, it took 10 years for the intervention and the [restoration] project. We have no reason to say it will take us less,” he said.
Lepore was speaking as the first stages of the civil protection plan around the Garisenda tower began.
A protective metal cordon is being erected to “contain debris resulting from a possible collapse, to reduce the vulnerability of surrounding buildings and the exposure to the population, as well as blocking access to the off-limits area,” the city council said.
The cordon will be fixed into the ground, and will include specially designed rockfall protection nets, also made of metal and also anchored to the ground.
The warning of a possible collapse was issued in a report by the scientific committee which has monitored the site since 2019.
It puts the site on “high alert” and states that experts “believe that safety conditions no longer exist to operate on or around the tower, except within the framework of a civil protection plan.”
Monitoring of the site over the past month has revealed an “unexpected and accelerated trend” of “crushing” compression to the base of the tower, with gradual disintegration of the stone used to clad the base and cracks expanding in the brick above, it says.
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One of Bologna’s famous “twin towers” which dominate the city centre, the 48 metre Garisenda was built in the 12th century when Bologna was a mini Manhattan, with dozens of towers reaching towards the sky, each built by local families trying to construct theirs higher than the last.
