Can you spot the Swiss leaning tower?

But if you’re in Switzerland, there’s definitely a much more important question to answer: which of nearby St Moritz’s many towers is the Leaning Tower that is punted as the town’s trademark (inasmuch as that statement ignores the gorgeous Lake St Moritz or St Mortzerzee at the base of the slope on which the town is built; the world-famous Cresta Run bobsled track and the small matter of the surrounding Alps)?

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but the freedom of expression guaranteed there allows users to express a fair amount of ignorance along with their occasionally life-changing insights. Check out other people’s holiday snaps and they identify any multi-storey structure in the entire Engadine valley in which the town is situated as – definitively the Leaning Tower.

STICKING AROUND. The Leaning Tower (above) was part of a now demolished church dedicated to St Mauritius, and has been a landmark in the area for hundreds of years.

To be fair, there is the matter of perspective. A photograph taken from below any of the town’s multiple spires can make the tower look like it’s leaning or, if it’s straight, like the buildings, trees or other objects near it are in danger of falling over. This is due to a phenomenon known as “keystoning” where, because you (and thus your camera) have leaned back to get the top of a tall structure to fit into the viewfinder, the top of the lens is slightly further away from it than the bottom, and this is visually expressed by whatever you took a picture of appearing to lean backwards.

STATIONARY. The tower at the St Moritz Train Station is perfectly symmetrical.

That sort of thing is redeemable via Photoshop, but many will feel that such little natural filips in a digitally-dominated age are useful in preventing our brains from atrophying.

So – to the contenders. The first tower you’ll see on arrival in St Moritz is the one atop the train station at the bottom of the hill. It’s a sturdy, solid, relatively modern-looking affair with straight edges. Squint at it and you’ll feel reasonably assured that it’s not the one you’re after.

Then there’s the tallest steeple in town, the pointy clock tower of the St Moritz Protestant Church, which dominates the central shopping district. Because it’s hemmed in by the church, residences and shops, it’s very difficult to exclude other structures when taking a photograph of it and the perspective problem will definitely play a role. However, since residents in the adjacent flats don’t seem to be rappelling from their bedroom doors to the edge of their balconies, it’s reasonable to assume everything is on the level in this area.

A FLOP? The wedding-cake spire of St Karl’s Catholic Church appears to be out of alignment, but isn’t.

The Romanesque St Karl Church in St Moritz-Bad (that part of the town on the level valley floor at one end of the lake) offers a convincing candidate for the Leaning Tower title. It may have something to do with the church spire’s layered wedding-cake appearance, with the uneven outline confusing the eye, which is subconsiously trying to draw a straight line along the outside edge. But though it’s very picturesque, St Karl’s tower loses out to a structure once dedicated to a more exotically named colleague.

St Mauritius (also known as Maurice, Morris or – ah! – Moritz) was the Egyptian commander of the Roman Army’s Theban legion in around AD 250-300. He was martyred when the Roman Emperor Maximian asked the legion to make sacrifices to pagan gods before going into battle. Mauritius/Maurice/Morris/Moritz, a Christian, and his equally pious soldiers refused and their brave supreme leader had them all killed.

ANGLED. Either the Leaning Tower is skew, or the pine trees around it are all colluding to make it look so.

There’s a modern church dedicated to St Mauritius in St Moritz, but the Leaning Tower has been a landmark since the 12th century and is all that remains of a church demolished in 1890. Curiously, when standing near the bottom and peering up, the tower looks straight, but cross the road and look back and it’s clear: this tower is more perpendicular to the slope that its architects intended.