Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa FROM THE PUBLISHER
In Tilt, author Nicholas Shrady reveals how the campanile, or bell tower, in Pisa's Campo dei Miracoli became the iconic Tower of Pisa. Even standing straight and true, the tower's marble and lime facade would be instantly recognizable the world over. Yet its distinctive tilt, which measured 16 degrees from vertical when construction was completed in 1370, has long been a mystery. Was it the result of shoddy workmanship or the brainchild of a hunchback maestro who skewed the tower to avenge his own condition? Nearly a millennium since its construction, the tower still stands (more than 4 meters - or 5 degrees - askew) in defiance of logic, gravity, and soaring odds - a mute witness to history as it has unfolded.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
In his informative and often amusing book, Shrady, the author of Sacred Roads: Adventures From the Pilgrimage Trail, finds great hope in this; the endearing old cuss of architectural treasures ''symbolizes all that is wondrous and strange in a world that is fast losing good measures of both.''
— Taylor D. Johnson
The Washington Post
Shrady has written something akin to a biography of the famed and flawed bell tower and is a good guide to its life and times, delighting and educating at once. He has created order out of centuries of chaos by providing a timeline, starting in 180 B.C., when ancient Pisae became a Roman colony, moving through the beginning of construction in 1173, and on to the 2001 celebration of the most recent (and possibly most successful) effort to stabilize the structure.
— Evelyn Small
Publishers Weekly
In this entertaining but slight history of the famous Italian landmark, Shrady (Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail) quickly recounts the saga of the bell tower that was begun in 1173 and has captivated the world's imagination ever since. He summarizes the tower's history, including its importance for the city of Pisa, which was a great maritime republic during the Middle Ages; explains why the story of Galileo's use of the tower to conduct experiments on falling objects was probably fabricated by one of the master's disciples; discusses the 19th-century Romantic poets' fanciful idea that the tower's tilt was deliberate on the part of its anonymous architect; and tells the story of the tower's near destruction by the Allies in WWII after they discovered that the Germans were using it as an observation post. Because the tower is built on unstable subsoil, it started to lean toward the south soon after construction began, and over the centuries the tilt increased at an alarming rate. Shrady discusses the numerous commissions that have studied the problem and outlines unsuccessful stabilizing attempts, including a plan approved by Mussolini that nearly toppled it. Shrady's brief account of the tower's probable fate is concise and engaging, but it contains nothing new. It's the book's format that is unusual: the cover and the pages cut on a slant, like the tower, a marketing gimmick that will most likely relegate the book to the souvenir shelf. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A slim, top-drawer chronicle of Pisaﾽs wonderful, drunken campanile. For more than 800 years, the Romanesque bell tower "has teetered on the brink of oblivion, but neither earthquakes, war, misguided architectural interventions, nor the relentless onslaught of contemporary tourism has ever managed to topple it," writes Barcelona-based journalist Shrady (Sacred Roads, not reviewed) in this clear-eyed yet delightfully infatuated tribute to the tower. He sings its praises—the lustrous marble, the weightless open galleries: a column of columns—while at the same time sending a few of its myths to the trash bin. It lists, for instance, not because of devious laborers or incompetent craftsmen or God, but because it was built on the shifting ground of a bog; nor is it likely that Galileo ever threw anything more than a gaze from the top of the tower. Still, there are mysteries: Who was the architect, why did construction start and stop and start and stop again and again, and why, with its progressive degrees of inclination—slowly, implacably on the move until it was over five degrees out of plumb—has it not simply gone south? Helping to make sense of this unintentional folly, Shrady situates the campanile within the sublime landscape of the Campo dei Miracoli, with its cathedral, hospital, baptistery, and graveyard, and also within the greater context of Pisaﾽs rise and fall as a city-state and maritime power. We also meet the many individuals who had a hand in the centuries-long construction of the tower, and the commissions seeking to right the towerﾽs skew, including Mussoliniﾽs near-disastrous tinkerings (Il Duce hated the tower, making it that much more lovable). Andrunning through the story is the towerﾽs evolution from civic embarrassment to a source of pride: "this tilting, defiant campanile symbolizes all that is wondrous and strange in a world that is fast losing good measures of both." Comfortably erudite, Shrady covers the towerﾽs history without diminishing its gratifying improbability. (17 illustrations; the book itself will be printed in a slanted format) Agent: Christy Fletcher/Carlisle & Co.
Home
