The Garisenda Tower in 1904: displacement time series

Arianna Pesci, Daniele Randazzo

34 pp.

Immagine di copertina del volume 198

In 1904, professor Francesco Cavani, commissioned by the Municipality of Bologna, was tasked with evaluating the stability of the Garisenda Tower. To this end, he developed an innovative monitoring system, based on a plumb line fixed about 40 meters high on the south wall and specialized telescopes, equipped with a double system of lenses and focuses, capable of detecting displacements with precision up to one‐twentieth of a millimeter. The tables attached to his report present in detail the monitoring data, including time series of the eastward and northward displacements, represented at a 20:1 enlarged scale. In this study, the original series were digitized, scaled, and exported for analysis using modern methods. The goal is to extract information on the dynamic characteristics of...

Published: 2025-10-30