These mini castles were built all over the city.
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.
Only a few survive to the current day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Bologna https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1296207418306952
One hypothesis, the city built the towers in hopes of one day being the locale for an Assassin’s Creed game, thus improving tourism.
But their plans were foiled because Ubisoft thought its all baloney
Much more impressive than my towers of bologna
In the voice of Carl from ATHF “hehe yeah I got a bologna tower for ya baby”
Significantly less delicious though
the frumunda is what really makes the difference.
They had dozens of towers up until the invention of photography. And now they’re almost all gone. That’s even more impressive in a sadder way.
The 1800s saw a LOT of buildings torn down and/or repurposed due to industrialization. Whether it was the factories themselves or the housing for the workers.
And… the first half of the 1900s saw a LOT of Europe need to rebuild for multiple reasons.
Its easy to fixate on something pretty. But understanding the overall scheme, and how it is related to the current (increasingly global) housing crisis is the point of learning from history.
i guess it’s sad, but by the time photography came around, they had been silly and useless already for hundreds of years… nobody needed them for anything, and they were always at risk of just toppling over… the rich families spent years and years building useless vanity projects that would eventually just crumble on top of the heads of people living down on the street…
Towers were a part of the meta in Age of Empires II: Age of Kings…
Then they got nerfed in the Definitive Edition, so tower rushing became less popular as you can see.
Bologna is also home to the oldest surviving university in the world
My tour guide claimed it was a status thing to have the tallest tower.
Some things never change
This reminds me of the Georgian Svan towers. These towers were also used as defensive fortification for families.
Same in San Gimignano
They definitely went Tower mad there for a while. This is also around the time Jenga was invented and the problem sort of took care of itself.
They made the game as a way to train builders to build these towers but people just enjoyed the game and forgot about building the towers
Honestly thought this was a prank to get me to google the phrase “towers of bologna”
