The porticoes of Bologna, Italy. The city’s street are lined by 60 km of covered arcades in several styles and are a UNESCO protected site.
The porticoes of Bologna, Italy. The city’s street are lined by 60 km of covered arcades in several styles and are a UNESCO protected site.
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The origins of Bologna’s porticoes can be traced back to the Middle Ages, in the years around 1100, when Bologna became an independent Comune (city state) and the University, the first in the Western world, was founded. These important developments began to attract new residents from the countryside, and students and professors from all over Europe. The need to create new residential and commercial spaces led the Bolognesi to find an ingenious solution: to create additional space starting from the first floor of the houses by extending the buildings outwards. The ledge that was created was supported by pillars, and a sequence of pillars created a portico.
If originally this was illegal construction, starting from 1288, a statute by the Comune of Bologna established that all new houses be built with a portico and that existing ones be equipped with one; it also mandated that porticoes, even though they were built by individuals on private land, remain for public use.
To this day, the city still maintains this public – private ownership of the portico that grants passage to citizens while the owners of the house with the portico are in charge of the maintenance of the portico.
Thanks to the 1288 statute, the city is lined with 60 km of porticoes (42 in the old town), with styles ranging from gothic to renaissance to neoclassical and rationalist.
It includes the portico leading to the city’s main sanctuary, dedicated to the Holy Virgin of St Luke, which, with its 3,78 km and 666 arches, is the longest portico in the world.
I know exactly where that is. Near the towers.
I lived just off that street. Via Santo Stefano. So funny to see that here..