Viewed from a certain angle, they appear to form a V for victory. There are two record-breaking leaning towers: the tallest in the world along with the most crooked in Italy. The second, with an inclination of four degrees, is slightly higher than that of Pisa (3.97 degrees). For very little, but it takes the cake (not fame). It is the Garisenda tower in Bologna. And with its V companion, the Torre degli Asinelli, it has become an icon of the capital of Emilia-Romagna.
To Dante, the Garisenda reminded him of a colossus looming over him. In the Divine Comedy, he referred to Anteo, the giant who guarded the ninth circle of hell, when he took the poet Virgil and himself with his enormous hand: “As it happens when looking at the Garisenda / by the inclined part and a cloud / is running in the opposite direction to her, / that’s how it seemed to me to look at Anteo / and see that he was leaning: at that moment, / I preferred to find myself elsewhere”. (Hell, canto XXXI, translation by José MarÃa Micó)
It should be noted that in Dante’s time the Garisenda was 12 meters taller: it reached 60 meters. But three decades after the poet’s death, in 1354, the noble Giovanni Visconti, then Lord of Bologna, ordered the tower to be reduced before the risk of collapse. Today, therefore, it measures 48 meters; and the deviation of its top with respect to the base is 3.2 m.
La Garisenda is preserved as testimony to a time when noble families raised their towers as a sign of power. It is estimated that Bologna had at least 80 – the figure of 200 given earlier seems clearly an exaggeration – with a New York skyline from the Middle Ages.
This particular tower is named after Filippo and Oddo dei Garisendi, who had it built around 1109. The Garisendi were a prosperous family of Ghibelline money changers; that is, supporters of the Holy Roman Empire. In the late Middle Ages, there were two great spheres of political power: the Guelphs, who supported the Pope, and the Ghibellines, who defended the Emperor. In Bologna, one and the other competed in the construction of towers.
Currently, the Garisenda cannot be visited, unlike its neighbor: the Asinelli tower. The two are located in the central piazza di Porta Ravegnana – barely 10 meters separate them – where in Roman times the Via Emilia passed (which connected Piacenza, Fidenza, Parma, Reggio, Modena, Bologna, Imola and Rimini).
Both are from the same period –the Torre degli Asinelli was built between 1109 and 1119–, both belonged to Ghibelline houses –although the Asinellis later changed sides– and both were the same height: 60 meters. But unlike the Garisenda, the Torre degli Asinelli underwent several extensions to reach its current 97.2 meters, which make it the tallest leaning tower on the planet (just slightly surpassing Big Ben in London). With which, today he looks over his shoulder at her partner.
From the top of the Torre degli Asinelli, the Garisenda is barely halfway up. To reach this privileged viewpoint, over the roofs of Bologna, it is necessary to climb 498 steps. Although up to three elevator projects have been studied, the only way to ride is still by a wooden staircase completed in 1684. Visits are by groups of up to 25 people, who enter every quarter of an hour, and only by online reservation.
The inclination of this tower is 1.3 degrees, which means that the deviation of the top from the base is 2.2 meters. Reviewing its history, it seems a miracle that it is still standing. In 1185 it suffered a fire. In 1513, during the celebrations for the election of Pope Leo X, he was accidentally shot by a cannon. And during World War II allied airmen made bets on who would hit the target (none hit)… Not to mention the earthquakes, of course. The strongest in recent times was in May 2012, with an epicenter 36 km north of Bologna. It caused the death of 27 people.
The Torre degli Asinelli has four faces: a gloomy face, a scientific face, a folkloric face and a jinxed face.
The gloomy face refers to its use as a gallows. From the s. XV, the ecclesiastics sentenced to death were locked in a hanging iron cage. They were left out in the open, in full view of passers-by, until they died. In that same century, the tower also housed a prison.
The scientific character was given to it by the astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli (in 1640) and the physicist Giovanni Battista Guglielmini (at the end of the 18th century). Riccioli is known for being the first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body. For his part, Guglielmini was able to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth by throwing lead spheres from the top of the tower. He published his results 60 years before Foucault.
The folkloric facet is due to its legend. He talks about a humble peasant madly in love with a noble girl, with whom it was impossible for him to marry because of the difference in status. In those that his two donkeys -asinelli in Italian- guided him to a treasure. With that fortune, he had the tower built and managed to impress the girl’s family.
Finally, a superstition also weighs on the Torre degli Asinelli. He says that if a student from the University of Bologna rises to the top of him before graduating, he will never get the degree.
Each one with its history and its curiosities, therefore, the Torre degli Asinelli and the Gariselda are as inseparable as the Fat and the Skinny. In the Bolognese dialect they are known as the Tårr Lónga and the Tårr Måzza (the long tower and the short tower). In reality, they had been physically united: in the s. XIV, a wooden bridge was built between the two at about 30 m high. It would have served the Duke of Milan Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who had then usurped power in Bologna, to watch over the always turbulent central market and prevent possible riots.
The V of the two towers remains the most striking reminder of the ancient Turrita city (full of towers).
