Some people predict that the 14,500 tonne tower will straighten up completely by the year 2300, but Bentivoglio believes that more work will have to be carried out by future generations. "According to studies by researchers at Stuttgart University, with whom we worked, the tower will continue to straighten another couple of millimetres and then stabilise before starting to lean again, but at a much slower rate than previously," Bentivoglio said. The tower recovered 50cm and returned to the incline it had two or three centuries earlier. The results of this massive restoration programme were almost immediate. The Italian state spent €30m ($40m) million on the tower. The tower itself was encircled with steel cables. The water beneath it was drained, the foundations were reinforced with 15-metre concrete pillars and 60 cubic metres of clay was removed. It was closed for 10 years while some serious safety work was carried out. The Tower of Pisa's greatest incline was observed in early 1990 and there was a risk that it might collapse altogether. "It was expected," he said, as a result of the major restoration programme carried out between 19by Michele Jamiolkowski, engineer and professor at the Technical University of Turin. Giuseppe Bentivoglio, engineer and technical director of the Opera del Duomo, the body supervising the monuments in the Piazza dei Miracoli, was far more prosaic. In the torpor of summer, when Silvio Berlusconi's political future and Enrico Letta's new government vied for press coverage, news of this "spontaneous straightening" was perceived as the latest demonstration of Italian genius. On 15 August the scientific committee charged with monitoring the tower revealed in its annual report that it had spontaneously recovered 2.5cm of its vertical incline between 20. Has a miracle now occurred in the Piazza dei Miracoli or miracle square, where the tower stands?
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