Word: towering
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...almost a million visitors clambered up the 294 steps and peered out over its vertiginous tilt--about 13 ft. off plumb and growing by an alarming .04 in. to .08 in. a year. Pisa's historic Leaning Tower, experts warned, had leaned too far and could topple at any time in the next decade or two. So the 800-year-old white marble structure, one of Italy's most famous monuments, was closed for nearly 12 years and for $25 million of ingenious engineering work to set it a little straighter. Not, of course, entirely straight--Dio mio!--that would...
Over last weekend, timed to the Feast of San Ranieri, Pisa's patron saint, the plaza beneath the tower was reopened to the public. The tower itself will be reopened in the fall--but only to 30 visitors at a time, accompanied by a guide. And no leaning...
...tower is built directly on an ancient riverbed of soft, sandy soil, and the foundation is shallow for a structure that weighs 32 million lbs. (14,500 metric tons...
...Standing there, one can see 7-Eleven, Staples, Pizzeria Uno, Peet’s Coffee, American Express Travel, the House of Blues, the Vitamin Shoppe, CVS, Abercrombie & Fitch, Pacific Sunwear, Sunglass Hut, Urban Outfitters, Tower Records, two different Breugger’s Bagels stores, and—just barely—the Harvard Coop (turned Barnes & Noble college superstore...
...solely designed to impress potential donors. Rather, the loveliness of the campus mingles with and enhances learning—the reason that critic David Denby has argued that beautiful surroundings are vitally important for education. The columns of Widener bespeak a reverence for the books within; the gleaming tower of Memorial Hall is as eloquent a statement of the University’s values as any Commencement address (one reason undergraduates were short-sighted to complain about the tower’s renovation). Stripped of its campus, conducted in an office park or a strip mall—or over...