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Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

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31–40 of 75 posts

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#31
post #19
post #18

Was hoping this was about lunch meat.

Is that somehow related?

What Americans call baloney, is properly spelled Bologna ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_sausage ) and named after the city of Bologna. I came here cautiously hoping to find a good meat-based pun, but disappointment is rather the whole experience.

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#32
post #30

Allow me to say that if you can, please, go visit Bologna. It's still one of the few places where tourism won't affect much your own experience. I had the tremendous luck of studying there 25 years ago when you could still bump into Umberto Eco having a coffee at the Students' Bar, when walking via Zamboni agglutinated most of the university life.

I just got back from a vacation to Como, Bologna and Milan. All amazing, but Bologna was the star. We stayed half a block from the Duomo and it was truly spectacular. The food, the people, the architecture…the place literally feels magical.

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#33
post #11

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

I think everything in the illustration is at least twice too high. The walled part of Bologna was ~1 km in diameter at that time, and the tallest towers were ~10% of that.

The model in Google Earth looks about right, at least if you compare it to this: https://static.bolognawelcome.com/immagini/ac/57/95/5d/20220...

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#34
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if we could only agree if we should use soccer or handegg field sizes.

Handegg, because there’s an actual standard size for them. Which is a worse decision for a sport but makes them better for measurement. Soccer’s trying to make their sport worse by standardizing, but they’re not there yet.

It will be more appealing to nerds when they could say "transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom"

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#35
post #11

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

Really? I zoomed in on the Towers of Bologna and then used the "measurement" tool to draw a 97m line on the ground. The line seems about as long as the tower is high. If you try that, do you get the same result?

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#36
post #31
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that somehow related?

What Americans call baloney, is properly spelled Bologna ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_sausage ) and named after the city of Bologna. I came here cautiously hoping to find a good meat-based pun, but disappointment is rather the whole experience.

Thanks, was not aware of that!

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#37
post #30

Allow me to say that if you can, please, go visit Bologna. It's still one of the few places where tourism won't affect much your own experience. I had the tremendous luck of studying there 25 years ago when you could still bump into Umberto Eco having a coffee at the Students' Bar, when walking via Zamboni agglutinated most of the university life.

I just got back from a vacation to Como, Bologna and Milan. All amazing, but Bologna was the star. We stayed half a block from the Duomo and it was truly spectacular. The food, the people, the architecture…the place literally feels magical.

You chose a good season too, as plain summer or winter a a bit extreme.

Glad you liked it, BTW. For some reason I feel I belong there, at least partially. Probably because those were really happy years for me.

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#39
post #11

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 live in Bologna. The few towers that remain are all very tall, but the largest one is extremely tall.

It makes more sense if you see them from an opposing hill, but they literally tower.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/042jP_mGA1W1thRhqv3ez4p3w

Re: Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers

#40
post #5
post #3

Why did they build them? Any practical advantage to live so high?

The article asserts (plausibly, but does not justify it) that there is a correlation between land value and structure height, since a higher structure has more floor area to be used in that high value area, while in a low land-value area you can do the same thing by spreading out. The article is actually quite disappointing as it’s really just clickbait content for a video that I have no interest in watching.

There’s a museum here in Bologna that says this was one of the main reasons, along with keeping a lookout for invaders. People built up because there wasn’t enough space to build out.
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