Bell tower of Santa Maria Majore Church - Leaning Tower of Pisa (Italy)

The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Pisa in Tuscany, Italy) is the most famous leaning building in the world. Its height is 55.8 m, weight is 14,500 tons, the degree of deviation from the vertical is up to 4 degrees, the building material is marble, the number of steps to the bell tower is 294(296). 1173 August 9 the building of the Tower of Pisa began - one of the architectural masterpieces, decorating the Square of Miracles (Campo dei Miracoli) in Pisa, which consisted of a cathedral, a baptistery and a cemetery. It is not known exactly, who was the architect of the tower, Bonani Pizian is credited with a significant contribution to the building of the tower. 1178 the works stopped, because the tower, built on the alluvial soil, began to lean little by little. The first three floors, built under Bonani's direction, sloped 0.5 degrees to the north, and the floor, where the servants' quarters were supposed, to be was not built so, that the axis of the structure passed through it. A century later, work was resumed under Giovanni di Simone. This 1272-1278 built three more floors. After the collapse of the third to sixth floors, the tower began to lean in the other direction - it tilted 0.5 degrees to the south. Later, the construction work was delayed by the Wars of Pisa and Genoa, which ended in the Battle of Meloria. XIV century at the beginning, the tower still did not have the upper part, where the belfry was to be installed. This part in 1360-1370 completed by Tomaz Pizanas, the third and last architect, who led the building of the Tower of Pisa. The tower has an original cylindrical shape, its six floors are surrounded by colonnades, and a belfry is installed at the top. However, since it began to be used, the building began to lean even more. As a result, in 1838 the architect Alexander dela Gerardeska ordered the foundations to be excavated to check their stability and that of the columns. Unfortunately, after that, the water began to seep into the surrounding soil even more intensively and the situation worsened. Studies have shown, that, if the tower had been even slightly higher, it would have fallen immediately. In the last century, the sarcophagus of Bonano Pizian was discovered during the excavation of the foundations. The townspeople buried him under a building, that can be called a monument to the famous architect. In 2001 the Leaning Tower of Pisa is stabilized and is expected to remain so for at least 200 years.

A medium-complexity, well-detailed model of an architectural monument, suitable for a modeler of almost any experience, but for beginners it is better to glue it under the supervision of a more experienced colleague and not as one of the first more complex models.