On the 1st of April 2006 we published an April Fool story entitled "Tourists in Pisa surprised to find tower straightened". Back then, the idea that people could wake up and find the tower standing straight in the Campo dei Miracoli was so far from the truth to seem like the perfect April Fool material.
Six years later, however, extensive engineering works on the legendary tower have actually sharply reducing its tilt from an angle of 5.5 degrees to 3.99 degrees. While the result is that the tower will survive to delight future generations of tourists, the renovation in 2011 ended its status as the farthest leaning tower.
Currently the northern German town of Suurhusen holds the Guinness World Record. The church tower slants at an angle of 5.19 degrees, now well ahead of its cousin in Pisa. The Suurhusen church tower is in competition with several other towers in Germany and one in St. Moritz, Switzerland, for the Guinness World Records title.
While European cities battle for the record, a modern masterpiece of architecture, Capital Gate, in Abu Dhabi is the world's furthest man-made leaning tower purposely built to lean 18 degrees westwards - more than four times that of the world famous tower of Pisa in its "tiltiest" days.
No matter which town is home to the world's "farthest leaning tower", modern or old, none of them will likely rich the popularity of Pisa's famous structure.
