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To get a true sense of scale, here's the same view on Google Earth: https://earth.google.com/web/@44.48152905,11.33820409,94.604... You can see the towers that are still standing. They visibly stick out from the shorter buildings, but they're nowhere near as big as in the picture.
That particular illustration is an artistic interpretation of another older illustration. I wish I could place a link for reference right now but I’m using my phone and that’s no fun. There’s a YouTube video somewhere that explains all of this and shows a more accurate physical model (or as accurate as can be reasonably expected) that is located somewhere in Bologna, which suggests that there were quite a few towers…
That particular illustration is an artistic interpretation of another older illustration. I wish I could place a link for reference right now but I’m using my phone and that’s no fun. There’s a YouTube video somewhere that explains all of this and shows a more accurate physical model (or as accurate as can be reasonably expected) that is located somewhere in Bologna, which suggests that there were quite a few towers…
In architecture, some of the more interesting I have seen are Guangdong's Diaolou (碉樓) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaolou - but of course we have castles, bridges, etc. IIRC John Young, architect and Cryptome maintainer, made some interesting studies in to public spaces as "the architecture of control". When you look at mass transit stations, for instance, there are so many control elements which we consider normal - lines, signage, threats of prosecution, physical barriers, choke points, hidden connections, video, etc. - but are actually explicit acknowledgement of risk, danger, threat and control.
But something as simple as staple foods (deriving from settled agriculture and thus central control), or the entire field of logistics, operations research and indeed computing can also be linked directly to force projection.
Truly, we are base creatures.
The product of the human brain has escaped the control of human hands. This is the comedy of science. - Karel Čapek (1921), inventor of the term 'robot'
Note, those pictures depict the towers as about 5x bigger than they actually were. To get a true sense of scale, here's the same view on Google Earth: https://earth.google.com/web/@44.48152905,11.33820409,94.604... You can see the towers that are still standing. They visibly stick out from the shorter buildings, but they're nowhere near as big as in the picture.
Why did they build them? Any practical advantage to live so high?
They were pretty common in every big enough city in Italy at that time.
Another good example would be Perugia. At a certain point it was even called “turrita”, literally “of towers”. As of now there’s only one left, Sciri Tower[0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_degli_Sciri?wprov=sfti1#...
Was hoping this was about lunch meat.
Note, those pictures depict the towers as about 5x bigger than they actually were. To get a true sense of scale, here's the same view on Google Earth: https://earth.google.com/web/@44.48152905,11.33820409,94.604... You can see the towers that are still standing. They visibly stick out from the shorter buildings, but they're nowhere near as big as in the picture.
I think Google Earth might be more wrong than the illustration. One of the two Towers of Bologna is 97m. On GE it looks less than that. 97m is more than 33 stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Bologna