Toynbee "Garisenda"

D. compares the stooping giant Antaeus to the Garisenda tower as it appears to a spectator when the clouds are sailing over it from behind him, [Inf. xxxi. 136-138] [Anteo]; in one of his early sonnets, D. mentions la Garisenda torre, Rime li.

These two towers stand in a small piazza at the E. end of what is now the Via Rizzoli, in the quarter formerly known as the Porta Ravignana, nearly in the centre of the town. Benvenuto says that the Garisenda (which is also known as 'la torre mozza') was considerably higher at the time D. wrote, a great part of it having been thrown down by Giovanni di Oleggio, one of the Visconti of Milan, during his 'tyranny' (1351-60) at Bologna. [See G. Gozzadini, Delle torri gentilizie di Bologna (Bologna, 1888), pp. 271- 284.]

There is a tradition to the effect that the Garisenda tower was built purposely with a lean, in order that it should attract more attention than the lofty Asinelli tower at its side. A close inspection, however, of the building will reveal the fact that the courses of bricks as well as the holes for the scaffolding (which still remain), run at right angles to the inclination of the tower, thus proving that the leaning is due, not to design, but to the accidental sinking of the foundations. To the same cause is doubtless due the inclination of the neighbouring tower, and of the campanile at Pisa (which is 13 ft. out of the perpendicular in a height of 179 ft.), as well as of several of those at Venice. Vasari, in his life of Arnolfo di Lapo, discusses the reasons why neither the Campanile at Pisa, nor the Garisenda tower at Bologna, has lost its stability in spite of the inclination.