ST. MORITZ, Switzerland — In an earlier era in Europe, it was not unusual for the sudden and unexpected departure of a monarch to touch off a prolonged period of claims and counterclaims until one of the pretenders finally prevailed.

Something like that seems to have broken out after engineers performed extensive renovations on the legendary Leaning Tower of Pisa, sharply reducing its tilt. While that assured that the tower would survive to delight future generations of tourists, the repairs ended its status as leaning-est tower, moving it to somewhere in the middle of the pack and touching off a competition, which still simmers, for the crown.

The matter seemed to have been settled a few years ago, when Guinness World Records in London awarded the title of “Farthest Leaning Tower” to one that accompanies a solid red brick church in the village of Suurhusen, in northern Germany. It leans at an angle of 5.19 degrees, compared with the Pisa tower’s 3.9 degrees.

But then other contenders emerged. The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, in an article last year, listed at least three other German towers it said could contend for the Guinness title.

Here in this Swiss ski resort, better known for cashmere than cows, leans a tower that some say should hold the real claim to the title. The 12th century structure, known as the tower of St. Mauritius, for a church it once accompanied, not only leans, it stands on shifting ground that ensures that every few years hydraulic jacks must be called in to straighten it up.

For 35 years, until his retirement four years ago, Pietro Baracchi worked in the St. Moritz building department and was responsible for the safety of the 108-foot tower. To see him gaze up at it is to see a parent fondly regarding an exceptional, if slightly different, child.

He still visits the tower once a month and employs sensitive instruments installed inside to measure its inclination. He then sends the results to the Technical University in Zurich, the country’s largest city, where engineers have plotted a course to keep it from toppling over.

“This is for us what the bell tower is for Pisa, or St. Peter’s for the Vatican,” said Baracchi, 69, leading a visitor to the top of the square tower, which unlike Pisa’s leaning tower is closed to the public.

When an earthquake shook the Friuli region of northeastern Italy in 1976, the tower in St. Moritz lurched so dangerously that some among the city fathers believed the time had come to tear it down.

“It tipped as much in one night as it should in one year,” Baracchi said.

The church that gave the tower its name was dismantled in 1893, when it was deemed to be in acute danger of collapse. In typical Swiss style, the tower’s fate was put to a general vote of the adult population, and about 84 percent voted to save it.

Even before the earthquake, horizontal supports of reinforced concrete had been installed under the base of the tower to stabilize it. Then, in 1983, hydraulic lifts were used to straighten the tower slightly and pads were inserted underneath it to further ensure its safety. In 2005 the hydraulic lifting was repeated to correct the inclination, and another correction is planned.

“Whether this is the most inclined tower in Europe, with a 5.364 degree inclination angle, I do not know,” wrote Alexander Puzrin of the Technical University in an email. “We are planning a new vertical adjustment campaign for 2013,” he added.

Towers lean for different reasons, Puzrin wrote, but the St. Mauritius tower tilts because it, and the entire neighborhood surrounding it, are essentially perched on a landslide that creeps inexorably down toward the shore of the lake on which St. Moritz lies.

Recently, three seismographs were installed, including one at the base and another at the top. When they begin registering later this year they will transmit data on the tower’s tilt directly to the experts in Zurich. Baracchi says he will continue his monthly visits.

The landslide, Puzrin said, which is about a mile long and a half-mile wide, can move by as much as 18 inches a year. Nadia Scartaccini, who moved here from Italy 26 years ago and now works in the Bata shoe store just below the tower, believes him.

“We have to get out by the end of the year,” she said, then lifted a corner of carpet to reveal jagged cracks in the concrete floor.

Other more modern buildings in the neighborhood were built to withstand the landslide, but older buildings will be torn down to enable the city to inject concrete into the slide, slowing its movement.

Sidewalks and streets show rippled asphalt, where the downward movement of the slide has forced up the ground beneath them. Last year, electrical and water mains in the area had to be replaced.

Pisa, for its part, is not feeling the threat from Suurhusen, St. Moritz or anywhere else.

“Frankly, we hadn’t heard about it,” Daniela Purchielli, director of tourism in the Pisa city government, said by telephone. “Our numbers are increasing.”

Last year, more than 426,000 visitors came, compared with 402,000 the year before.

No one counts the numbers of visitors to St. Moritz’s entry in the leaning tower duel.

Asked whether the town had approached Guinness for recognition of its tower, Sara Roloff, director of public relations for the local tourism organization, replied, “Not to my knowledge.”

Yet the tower remained, she said, “one of the emblems” of St. Moritz. “For us it will always be there, with its huge history,” she said.

Ludwig Guertler, of Berlin, clutched a snowboard while awaiting a bus ride to the slopes. He said he was in St. Moritz on business, living in a chalet not far from the tower, but had only recently noticed its tilt.

“This is the first time,” he said, glancing up.

Other visitors were astonished that anyone could miss it.

“We just stumbled on it. We didn’t know about it,” said Alessandro Barzaghi, 37, a restaurant chef from Italy on vacation here. “And imagine that they wanted to demolish it!”

To a certain extent, it has to be admitted, the whole competition is pointless. Barring human intervention, some of the leading contenders, such as those in Pisa and St. Moritz, would have long since been reduced to rubble. (Suurhusen’s bell tower is considered pretty stable.)

In 2005, the St. Moritz tower tipped to an angle of 5.4 degrees, more than the Guinness titleholder in Suurhusen, but it was hoisted back to a safer angle of 5.08 degrees. Puzrin said he would not again let the tower tilt beyond 5.36 degrees before correcting the inclination.

But that is not to say, however, that the contest for the title of tippiest tower is inconsequential. Frank Wessels, the pastor of the church in Suurhusen said the benefits were striking.

“We always had tourism,” he said by phone from Germany, “But it has increased tenfold. There’s even interest from Japan and South Korea.”