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Medieval structures in Bologna, Italy

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The Towers of Bologna are a group of medieval structures in Bologna, Italy. The two most prominent ones remaining, known as the Two Towers, are a landmark of the city.

History

Between the 12th and the 13th century, Bologna was a city full of towers. Almost all the towers were tall (the highest being 97 metres (318.2 ft)), defensive stone towers. Besides the towers, there are still some fortified gateways (torresotti) that correspond to the gates of the 12th-century city wall (Mura dei torresotti or Cerchia dei Mille), which itself has been almost completely destroyed.

The reasons for the construction of so many towers are not clear. One hypothesis is that the richest families used them for offensive/defensive purposes during the period of the Investiture Controversy.

In the 13th century, many towers were taken down or demolished, and others simply collapsed. Many towers have subsequently been utilized in one way or the other: as prison, city tower, shop or residential building. Still, the towers remained a famous sight of Bologna throughout the later periods; even Dante mentioned some of the towers in his Inferno. The last demolitions took place during the 20th century, according to an ambitious, but retrospectively unfortunate, restructuring plan for the city; the Artenisi Tower and the Riccadonna Tower at the Mercato di mezzo were demolished in 1917.

Fewer than twenty towers can still be seen in today's Bologna. Among the remaining ones are the Azzoguidi Tower, also called Altabella (with a height of 61 metres (200.1 ft)), the Prendiparte Tower, called Coronata (60 metres (196.9 ft)), the Scappi Tower (39 metres (128.0 ft)), Uguzzoni Tower (32 metres (105.0 ft)), Guidozagni Tower, Galluzzi Tower, and the famous Two Towers: the Asinelli Tower (97 metres (318.2 ft)) and the Garisenda Tower (48 metres (157.5 ft)).

Construction

The construction of the towers was quite tedious, the usage of serfs notwithstanding. To build a typical tower with a height of 60 m would have required between three and ten years of work.

Each tower had a square cross-section with foundations between five and ten meters deep, reinforced by poles hammered into the ground and covered with pebble and lime. The tower's base was made of big blocks of selenite stone. The remaining walls became successively thinner and lighter the higher the structure was raised, and were realised in so-called "a sacco" masonry: with a thick inner wall and a thinner outer wall, with the gap being filled with stones and mortar.

Usually, some holes were left in the outer wall as well as bigger hollows in the selenite to support scaffoldings and to allow for later coverings and constructions, generally on the basis of wood.

Number

The towers must actually have crowded Bologna in the Middle Ages and there has been considerable debate about their peak number before the first ones were demolished to avoid collapse or for other reasons.

The first historian to study the towers of Bologna in a systematic way was Count Giovanni Gozzadini, a senator of the Italian kingdom in the 19th century, who studied the city's history intensively, not least to raise the prestige of his home town in the context of the now united Italy. He based his analysis mostly on the civic archives of real estate deeds, attempting to arrive at a reliable number of towers on the basis of documented ownership changes. His approach resulted in the extraordinary number of 180 towers, an enormous amount considering the size and resources of medieval Bologna.

More recent studies pointed out that Gozzadini's methodology might have led to multiple counts of buildings, which could have been referred to in legal documents by different names, depending on the name of the family who actually owned it at a given moment. More recent estimates therefore reduced the number to a total between 80 and 100, where not all towers existed at the same time.

Two Towers

Main article: Two Towers, Bologna

The most famous pair of towers are located at the intersection of the roads that lead to the five gates of the old ring wall (mura dei torresotti). This was the site of the early medieval Gate to the Via Emilia, the Porta Ravennate, now remembered by the name of the adjacent Piazza di Porta Ravegnana. The taller tower is called the Asinelli while the smaller but more leaning tower is called the Garisenda.

The Asinelli Tower was built between 1109 and 1119 by the Asinelli family. At 97m tall, there are 498 steps inside.

The Garisenda Tower is shorter at 47m and is known for its steep overhand due to subsidence of the foundations.

In October 2023, due to fears that the heavily leaning Garisenda Tower would collapse, both towers were closed to the public. In December 2023 the municipality of Bologna launched a crowdfunding campaign to restore the site, with the mayor of Bologna estimating that the project would take 10 years and cost 20 million Euros.

List of the still existing towers and gateways

Towers

Accursi Tower (Torre Accursi or Torre dell'orologio) - P.zza Maggiore
Agresti Tower (Torre Agresti) - P.zza Galileo
Alberici Tower (Torre Alberici) - Via S. Stefano - P.zza della Mercanzia
Arengo Tower (Torre dell'Arengo) - Piazza Maggiore
Asinelli Tower (Torre degli Asinelli) - Piazza Ravegnana, 82
Azzoguidi Tower (Torre Azzoguidi or Torre Altabella) - Via Altabella, 7
Bertolotti-Clarissimi Tower (Torre Bertolotti-Clarissimi) - Via Farini, 11
Carrari Tower (Torre Carrari) - Via Marchesana
Catalani Tower (Torre Catalani) - Vicolo Spirito Santo
Conoscenti Tower (Torre Conoscenti) - Via Manzoni, 6 (cortile del Museo Civico Medioevale)
Galluzzi Tower (Torre Galluzzi) - Corte Galluzzi
Garisenda Tower (Torre Garisenda) - Piazza Ravegnana
Ghisilieri Tower (Torre Ghisilieri) - Via Nazario Sauro
Guidozagni Tower (Torre Guidozagni) - Via Albiroli 1-3
Lambertini Tower (Torre Lambertini) - Piazza Re Enzo
Lapi Tower (Torre Lapi) - Via IV Novembre
Oseletti Tower (Torre Oseletti) - Strada Maggiore, 34-36
Prendiparte Tower (Torre Prendiparte or Torre Coronata) - Via S. Alò, 7
Scappi Tower (Torre Scappi) - Via Indipendenza, 1
Toschi Tower (Torre Toschi) - P.zza Minghetti dietro Casa Policardi
Uguzzoni Tower (Torre Uguzzoni)' - Vicolo Mandria, 1

Gateways

Castiglione Gateway (Torresotto di Castiglione) - Via Castiglione, 47
Piella Gateway (Torresotto dei Piella, or Porta Govese or del Mercato) - Via Piella, via Bertiera
Porta Nuova Gateway (Torresotto di porta Nuova or del Pratello) - Via Porta Nuova, via M. Finzi
San Vitale Gateway (Torresotto di San Vitale) - Via S. Vitale, 56

Descriptions of the Towers by Dante Alighieri

As when one sees the tower called Garisenda
from underneath its leaning side, and then a cloud
passes over and it seems to lean the more,
thus did Antaeus seem to my fixed gaze
as I watched him bend...
— Divine Comedy, Inferno, XXXI, 136-140

Never can my eyes make amends to me --short
of going blind-- for their great fault,
that they gazed at the Garisenda tower
with its fine view, and --confound them!--
missed her, the worthiest of those
who are talked about.
— Rime, VIII

References

Roversi, G. (1989). Le torri di Bologna: quando e perché sorsero, come vennero costruite, chi le innalzò, come scomparvero, quali esistono ancora. Bologna: Edizioni Grafis.

Footnotes

Dante Alighieri (2000). "The Divine Comedy: Inferno". Translation by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander. Princeton Dante Project. Retrieved 2 May 2007.
Dante Alighieri (1967). "Rime". Translation by K. Foster and P. Boyde. Princeton Dante Project. Retrieved 2 May 2007.

External links

44°29′39″N 11°20′47″E / 44.4943°N 11.3465°E / 44.4943; 11.3465

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