04/08/2024
🪄How can one not love a city like Bologna? Its history, its liveliness, its food and... its porticos! Not only shelter from the rain and sun, but also a meeting space between streets and squares where one moves around looking at shop windows, as well as at murals, mosaics, frescos.
🏆Awarded a UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2021, these characteristic architectural elements follow one another for more than 60 km, 40 km of which are in the historic center alone, creating a spectacular concatenation that makes this city unique and attracts so many visitors each year.
📚The history of Bologna’s porticoes begins in the Middle Ages, when the growth of the University and the repopulation of the historic center necessitated new building measures.
🪄To make up for the lack of space, the floors of the second floors widened outward: in 1288, city statutes made it compulsory for every new dwelling to have a portico, which thus became a public asset and no longer private.
📝The 1288 edict also regulated the greatest urban planning revolution that ever existed in the city in medieval times. For example, 2.66m was the minimum height of Bologna’s Porticoes, such that a man on horseback can pass...with hat on his head.
⁉️Have you already visited Bologna?
