SuiZhong Leaning Tower

SuiZhong Leaning Tower

The SuiZhong Leaning Tower is located in Weiwei Town, 27 kilometers southwest of SuiZhong County. It was historically known as the Ruizhou Crooked Tower and is often referred to as the Strange Tower. This ancient tower was built during the Liao Dynasty. The remaining structure stands about 10 meters tall, with a stone base and brick-built body. It is a solid, three-tiered octagonal tower. The tower features carved brick patterns, but the Buddha statues in the niches, the canopy, and the flying apsaras have been lost. The tower leans 12 degrees toward the northeast, with the top displaced by 1.7 meters, yet it remains leaning without collapsing.

When people think of leaning towers, the image that first comes to mind is often Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa. This tower is world-famous for having leaned for centuries without falling, and even more so because Galileo’s “two iron balls” free-fall experiment was conducted there, leading to its inclusion in middle school textbooks. Although the Leaning Tower of Pisa is highly renowned, it is not the most tilted tower in the world. In fact, the “World’s Most Leaning Tower” is the Weiwei Crooked Tower, located in Weiwei Town, SuiZhong County, Huludao City.

The Weiwei Crooked Tower was built over 300 years before the Italian Leaning Tower of Pisa, and its degree of tilt exceeds that of the Tower of Pisa and any other leaning tower in the world, making it the true “World’s Most Leaning Tower.” Because of this, cultural heritage experts in Huludao have strongly urged that protecting the Weiwei Crooked Tower is urgent, and efforts should be made to apply for it to be listed in the Guinness World Records as soon as possible.