The Superintendence will give its approval to the Garisenda safety project only when it is definitively presented. And the Municipality, which proceeds with its choice of wanting to use the pylons used for the Tower of Pisa to secure the Asinelli’s ‘sister’, also contemplates plan B of rebuilding those pylons from scratch.
These are two of the most important findings that came out two days ago, in Rome, when the technicians of the Ministry of Culture received the delegation from Palazzo d’Accursio, which presented the guidelines for securing the monument. Confirmed, as mentioned, is the administration’s desire to proceed with the reuse of those two ‘winches’ already the protagonist of the Pisa pending project being brought back into shape. A less expensive operation than making them new again. The Municipality, however, in its face to face with the MiC, clarified that if “insurmountable” problems arise in proceeding with the recommissioning of those pylons, then they will be rebuilt from scratch. For now, however, it seems that the idea of reuse can move forward. The revitalization of the old machines will not be a trivial operation: they have not been maintained since 2019, as communicated by the Pisan Opera Primaziale to the Municipality. All in all, however, those in charge of Palazzo d’Accursio – as already underlined by Mayor Lepore in a recent press conference – would have found the already used ‘brackets’ of Piazza dei Miracoli in “good condition”. However, as emerges from the photos in Carlino’s possession, there is some residual rust at the base of the machines. So the Municipality has not completely discarded the idea, for now a last resort, of making faithful copies of the two machines.
The council will have to obtain the patrimonial clearance, assign the maintenance work of the machines to the Soilmec company (the original supplier of the products) and transfer those pylons from Pisa to Bologna. Only then, as already underlined by the mayor, will it be possible to install new software to make them work. As for the Superintendency, it will naturally endorse the entire operation once it becomes final. It will now be up to the Municipality to decide whether those machines, properly refurbished, will be able to carry out the delicate role to which they would be called. It certainly seems to also be a question of costs: making them new could increase the amount of resources needed. Now it stops, according to Lepore’s latest estimates, at more than 20 million euros from fundraising, without considering the five million euros that the Ministry of Culture itself has already made available through a tender for Pnrr towers and bell towers. During the Roman summit, the Municipality also illustrated the different intervention scenarios relating to the possible ways of using the shooting machine. It will be necessary to understand whether to introduce a variation in the stress state to achieve admissible safety levels. The administration’s objective, through the definitive safety of the tower, is to bring the monument out of the yellow alert state, to glide towards the ‘green’ of the situation out of danger.
