The Leaning Tower of Gingin

Sure, the Leaning Tower of Pisa gets all of the attention when it comes to huge towers that have fallen prey to a drunken slant. However, the famous Italian landmark pales in comparison to Australia’s Leaning Tower of Gingin, which is the self-proclaimed “leaniest” tower in the world. 

Located at the Gravity Discovery Center in Gingin, Australia (hence the name), the Gingin Tower was built to facilitate and illustrate gravity’s invisible pull. Constructed in 2008, the tower was meant to try and replicate Galileo’s famous experiment where he supposedly dropped various things from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, except with a more effective venue. To this end, the Gingin tower was intentionally built with a steep, 15-degree lean, making the Pisa tower’s 5.5-degree slant seem a bit weak. The carefully designed metal tower is held in place, even at its wonk angle, by a good 180 tons of concrete, making it safe, no matter how it looks. Nonetheless, visitors climbing the 222 steps of the 150-foot spire could be forgiven for being a bit disoriented.

Once at the top, visitors can play historic physicist and drop water balloons through a pair of metal tubes in a harmless recreation of Galileo’s famous experiment. Unsurprisingly, they will invariably land on the ground at roughly the same time, showing the efficacy of gravity to anyone who was still on the fence about this primal force in the universe.

The center itself is devoted to gravity education, providing guests with a number of displays and interactive experiments that explore the nature of gravity, and the universe including a walkable solar system and an observatory. But the true wonder lies in one precarious tower that seems to defy gravity itself.