[HN Gopher] Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers
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Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers
Author : geox
Score : 138 points
Date : 2024-05-23 12:08 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| jakub_g wrote:
| Nowhere as much and as tall, but villages in Georgian mountainous
| region of Svaneti also used to have many tall towers for
| defensive purposes. There's still a bunch remaining.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svan_towers
| novaRom wrote:
| Why did they build them? Any practical advantage to live so high?
| GaggiX wrote:
| Defense and prestige I imagine. Also the article reports that
| the towers were mostly "panic rooms", they were not lived in,
| only used in case of emergency.
| gumby wrote:
| 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.
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| They mostly were not used as living quarters, except cases of
| emergency.
|
| Its not like they rented out office space like in downtown
| Manhattan. Also no factories that required thousands of
| workers. So I'm not sure the modern analogy of square footage
| applies.
|
| They fell out of favor by the 16th century. Coincidentally
| about the same time as cannon starting being very effective.
| peterlk wrote:
| When we stayed in Bologna for a month, we were told that it was
| used defensively. You can see a very long ways from the top of
| the central tower (I think it's closed at the moment). It would
| have been nearly impossible for an army to approach Bologna
| without several days for Bologna to prepare
| kratom_sandwich wrote:
| There's even a HN post about the closure! Indeed, the two
| most famous towers Garisenda and Asinelli are closed for
| renovations for the forseeable future. IIRC, they used to be
| the same height and had a wooden bridge connecting them at
| the top. From there, guards could oversee the marketplace and
| look out for riots.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38087256
| ant6n wrote:
| If you just need it to view far, then why build more than the
| primary tower, a backup, and perhaps a secondary backup (in a
| pinch, you don't want to be caught without a secondary
| backup).
| toyg wrote:
| It's a combination of that and status. Wealthy families
| would build tall towers as a way to protect themselves: if
| you think you're at risk of getting wacked by a disgruntled
| competitor, you take to live in your tower for a few
| months, where nobody can sneak in. From that, it became a
| competition to show off the biggest pen1$-- sorry, tower;
| and then someone probably figured that the benefit of
| height could be used for the common good as well,
| installing city guards on the tallest towers.
| seadan83 wrote:
| To add to this, height advantage is enormous in combat.
| Arguably even more so then than today. A mob trying to
| storm up a narrow staircase under fire.. there is a
| strong force multiplier effect.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Same reason people build those prepper bunkers. The towers
| were presumably not there for the general public. Consider
| as well other castles and sieges. There is a limit of how
| many people would be allowed in, and everyone in a siege
| needed to pull their weight. Really, once a town is under
| siege, the castle is closed, when the town walls are
| breached, the pillaging happens and the castle does not
| open its gates. My point is that medieval town defense was
| not really a communal endeavor per se.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I lived there for several years and the prevailing notion among
| the locals seems to be status.
|
| Then again part of being a true citizen of Bologna is to have
| incorrect information on some of the landmarks there.
| Phrenzy wrote:
| Is the origin of using the word, baloney, to imply a
| statement is untruthful?
| llm_trw wrote:
| According to some citizen of Bologna: Yes.
| toyg wrote:
| I expect it comes from reactions to earlier attempts to
| pass US-made sausages for actual _mortadella_ (aka "bologna
| "), as in "that's not Bologna, that's <anglicized
| distortion of the name>!", which was then shortened to
| "that's baloney".
| silvanocerza wrote:
| To show off the wealth and prestige of the family mostly.
| Usually their houses were right by the towers. The higher the
| tower, the richer the family obviously.
|
| 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#...
| thesagan wrote:
| 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 but not that many and
| not that tall as shown here. In any case it still had an
| impressive skyline for its day.
|
| If I remember to do so, I'll come back here and post a link.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| The youtube video is embedded midway through the article:
| https://youtu.be/ikg3-GQLg3g
| Beijinger wrote:
| They looked like this (scroll down)
| https://www.fontanellestate.com/en/blog/visit-siena-italy-s-...
| darkwater wrote:
| Mmmh that's San Gimignano? Near Siena, Tuscany. Definitely
| worth a visit for any tourist in Italy but it's definitely
| also not Bologna.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> I wish I could place a link for reference right now but I'm
| using my phone and that's no fun.
|
| Isn't that really weird? I realise that most people experience
| the internet only through their phone browser and social media
| apps, where it's hard to do many of the common and simple
| things one can do on a computer, like pasting a link. How is it
| that those extremely fiddly interfaces have come to be the
| norm?
| tpmoney wrote:
| Because they're with us everywhere and conveniently at hand
| most of the time. A traditional computer, even in laptop
| form, is comparatively bulky, unwieldy and inconvenient.
| Laptops don't fit into your pocket, they don't pull out for
| one handed use while you're waiting in line and they don't
| slip easily back in once the line starts moving again. To
| type in text, you need both hands free, and a relatively
| stable surface to place your laptop on.
|
| Phones trade ease of use for ease of access. They allow
| people to be online and participating in an online discussion
| when and where a traditional computer would be prohibitive or
| inconvenient. And as a trade off those people aren't always
| able to do (or conveniently do) something they would do on
| those traditional computers. Most people most of the time
| seem to find that an acceptable tradeoff. And to be fair to
| those most people, I write far more than I copy and paste
| links so it's not unreasonable to find that tradeoff to be
| acceptable.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Most people never need to manually copypaste links on a
| mobile device because they can _share_ links, via the
| browser's share button, straight to all the apps relevant to
| them. Use cases like sharing URLs on a legacy non-mobile-
| oriented web platform such as HN are an extreme outlier. In
| any case, copying a URL via the browser's "Share->Copy" or
| equivalent isn't IMO too onerous a task even compared to C-l
| C-c.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Thanks. Well I don't really use my phone so I don't know
| all this.
| timmaxw wrote:
| 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.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| 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
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Why do people attempt to use "stories" as a measurement of
| height? There is no universal agreement for what a "story"
| is. 97 meters is in fact 97 meters.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Because it's evocative, it's easier to imagine what it
| looks like.
| kdazzle wrote:
| I think the universal agreement is actually to measure
| things in football fields
| llm_trw wrote:
| Now if we could only agree if we should use soccer or
| handegg field sizes.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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.
| bmacho wrote:
| It will be more appealing to nerds when they could say
| "transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom"
| throwup238 wrote:
| The number of atomic transitions a cesium 133 atom makes
| when fired across a football field at the speed of sound.
| tuatoru wrote:
| ... in dry air at STP.
| rascul wrote:
| Which handegg field size though? There is not just one
| standard. I think we should use the Canadian size, since
| they created it.
| whiterock wrote:
| which is also not normalized. A referee once told me that
| - in theory - football fields can be square. I think it
| was 80m x 80m since 80m is the minimum length and the
| maximum width. Correct me if I am wrong.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| If you're Australian, they can be circular.
| mmcclimon wrote:
| Field size for American football is definitely
| standardized: 100 yards between goal lines and 160 feet
| wide. Lots of Americans will have an intuitive sense for
| how long something like "three football fields" is.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| But that intuitive size would in fact be wrong. The size
| we associate with an American football field is more
| commonly going to be the distance including the end
| zones.
| croisillon wrote:
| with a banana for scale
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Going to play the pedantic card and mention that there's
| also no universal agreement on how to measure a building's
| height. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat on
| its own has three different methods and not everyone
| accepts those as being the correct and true way of
| measuring the building's height.
| jltsiren wrote:
| 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/immagin
| i/ac/57/95/5d/20220...
| timmaxw wrote:
| 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?
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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
| contingencies wrote:
| Refuge from or assertion of banditry or other express or implied
| threat of physical assault is a powerful force underlying the
| development of much of technology, not only architecture.
|
| In architecture, some of the more interesting I have seen are
| Guangdong's _Diaolou_ (Diao Lou ) -
| 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 Capek (1921),
| inventor of the term 'robot'
| swayvil wrote:
| That would be crunchy.
| arghtw wrote:
| Was hoping this was about lunch meat.
| timeon wrote:
| Is that somehow related?
| klyrs wrote:
| 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.
| timeon wrote:
| Thanks, was not aware of that!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I think Americans also use this word for "bullshit" strange
| enough
| seadan83 wrote:
| Try reddit instead for the puns!
|
| (My apologies for the snark)
| klyrs wrote:
| I said _good_ puns. I _like_ that bad jokes are punished
| severely here. Originality is rewarded.
| luckman212 wrote:
| Also came here for a lively discussion of luncheon meat. Was
| disappointed.
| fallinditch wrote:
| There are also towers in the Mani peninsular in Greece. They were
| built to defend against not only invaders and bandits but also
| neighbors due to vendettas. A local told me that blood feuds
| between families could often last for many generations.
|
| http://mani.org.gr/en/pir/towers.htm
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Yes, in that era it was somewhat lawless interfeudal warfare,
| arguably as big as a threat as those from other
| kingdoms/empires. The Italian city states would also fight
| against each other.
|
| I think part of the motivation for the Crusades, was redirect
| those feuds elsewhere. And it worked somewhat.
| pachico wrote:
| 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.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| 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.
| pachico wrote:
| 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.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I've heard many places, although I haven't independently verified
| it, that it wasn't until the invention of the elevator that
| towers were really valued for what we use them for today and the
| high floors were often cheaper.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Towers were mainly defensive structures. A tower would provide
| a commanding view of the surrounding area, and give archers and
| missile weapons substantial advantage. They were also somewhat
| intimidating and a display of wealth/power/prestige.
|
| Like walls they were vulnerable to sapping - digging under the
| structure and causing it to collapse. More so than walls due to
| their height. And later, cannon fire. Which is why along with
| castles they started going out of favour about the 16th
| century, except as cheap observation posts, such as on borders,
| and non-military structures such as lighthouses.
|
| As living quarters, much like castles they were not as
| practical as simpler manor homes. But in a very violent,
| somewhat lawless era, they were often used by the
| wealthy/powerful.
| tifik wrote:
| This topic and why that picture is very misleading is well
| covered by this video by The Present Past:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikg3-GQLg3g
| atombender wrote:
| Does nobody on HN read the articles? That exact video is what
| this article is commenting on.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The Yemeni city of Shibam is filled with mud high rises that have
| been around since the 1500s [0].
|
| I'd assume medieval Bologna was similar.
|
| [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibam
| Loic wrote:
| Thank you for the link, normally I just "upvote" a good
| comment, but here, I really recommend others to look at the
| Wikipedia page, especially the first "View of Shibam" in the
| gallery at the bottom. I would have never though it was
| possible to build that high with mud bricks.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I recommend checking out the ruins that litter Northern
| Arizona as well then.
|
| The indigenous civilization there (before it collapsed in the
| 1200s and its survivors migrated south and became the Aztec)
| built multi-storied pueblos, a number of which were even
| built into the rock.
|
| If you're ever out around Coconico and Flagstaff, you're in
| for an absolute treat.
| MISTERJerk2U wrote:
| For a moment I thought this headline was about the lunchmeat,
| often spelled as "baloney."
| alephnerd wrote:
| You ain't wrong. The lunchable's favorite has it's origins from
| Bologna.
| guilhas wrote:
| Funny that with the rise of "hidden history" "mud floods"
| channels like MyLunchBreak which show a lot of this historical
| uncanny or not well known paintings/pictures, more accurate
| history sources are also coming out to explain them
|
| But seeing ideas and opportunities of 500 years ago, that took
| dozens of years to take off, might help us better understand the
| opportunities we have now
|
| Aisha Ray - The Flying Train of Tartaria (electric)
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9nhe9mPHKLI
| holoduke wrote:
| A bit off topic. But lately i see in my social cocaine feeds a
| lot of ai generated content with a few days ago exactly this
| example with an image of zillion towers. Obviously AI generated.
| But the point is. I dont even know anymore what is real or not.
| Is this site real or also a fake AI story?
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