{"id":4807,"date":"2011-01-16T23:37:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-16T23:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/?p=4807"},"modified":"2011-01-16T23:37:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T23:37:00","slug":"struth-on-the-level-the-leaning-tower-cleans-its-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/2011\/01\/struth-on-the-level-the-leaning-tower-cleans-its-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Struth &#8211; On the level, the leaning tower cleans its act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_OY-0d2rKv_Q\/TTOBIcGUyxI\/AAAAAAAAMeI\/SMTNcnnsolQ\/s1600\/Leaning%2BTower%2Bof%2BPisa-724264.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_OY-0d2rKv_Q\/TTOBIcGUyxI\/AAAAAAAAMeI\/SMTNcnnsolQ\/s320\/Leaning%2BTower%2Bof%2BPisa-724264.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562931946714352402\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>STRUTH !\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that Swiss-born building restorer, Anton Sutter is going to have to level-up with his next employer after eight years of a somewhat warped approach to his last job.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Suttor and his team of ten Italians finally finished that last job just a week before Christmas \u2013 having meticulously used hand-brushes, scrubbers, chisels and even syringes to remove centuries of sea-salt, pigeon droppings, graffiti and decaying cement from the 24,424 blocks of stone and marble that make up the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa.<\/p>\n<p>Plus the ingrained sweaty hand prints of tourists trying to keep their balance as they struggled up and down the 296 sloping steps of the Tower.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout it all the restorers, too, had to contend with all those uneven steps, and learn to work on a constant angle while being buffeted with salt-laden winds and freezing gales in winter (even though the Tower is 12km away from the sea) \u2013 and in summer searing near-40 degree days and steamy nights.<\/p>\n<p>And making it all the more difficult they had to contend with a million or more visitors a year traipsing around and gawking at them, as the custodians of the Tower decided to keep it open throughout the eight years and $10m of restoration work.<\/p>\n<p>And could it all be a waste of time and the Tower one day fall over anyway? &#8220;Not likely,&#8221; says Mr Suttor. &#8220;It was stabilised in 2001 and there&#8217;s no risk of it falling in the next 200 years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now the only thing that remains is to remove the scaffolding used in the restoration job \u2013 and who better than a group of young mountaineers not afraid to hang out over the giddying 56-metre drop from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STRUTH !\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that Swiss-born building restorer, Anton Sutter is going to have to level-up with his next employer after eight years of a somewhat warped approach to his last job. Mr Suttor and his team of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[377],"class_list":["post-4807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-struth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}