Campanile

kam-pa-ne'la, the bell tower of Italian cities. It is usually a separate structure. The celebrated leaning tower of Pisa is a campanile. It is eight stories high, each surrounded by a row of columns. It leans thirteen feet out of the perpendicular. Other campaniles are those of Bologna, Padua, Cremona, Ravenna, and Florence. A fine Moorish bell tower erected at Seville, Spain, in 1568, is 350 feet high. It is surmounted by a bronze vane that weighs a ton and a half, yet turns easily in the wind. The campanile of St. Mark's, Venice, was 325 feet high. The figure of an angel sixteen feet tall stood on its summit. It served as a watch tower whence the lookout sighted incoming ships. It was ascended by a winding inclined plane instead of steps. Galileo made many of his observations from this tower. At one time a wooden cage hung half way up, in which prisoners were allowed to starve to death. In 1902 the tower fell with a crash. Antiquarians had a rich find in the brick, some of which was declared to have been brought from Rome as early as the first century.