Lately, whenever I look at the London skyline from anywhere
an odd artifact from Palazzo d'Accursio off Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore comes to
mind. It was the kind of thing that was
easy to forgo in favor of the early Renaissance art and more dramatic
historical artifacts. But it
communicated something that could only be appreciated geometrically or
visually. It was a model of medieval
Bologna, sometime around 1200-1300. At
that time, Bologna had around 180 independent towers.
They were built by bankers, guilds and the super-rich families
of the age probably as one of the few practical means of protecting wealth
which necessarily had a cumbersome, physical form. The towers were square and utilitarian. The few windows were arrow slits. Indeed, in the ceiling of one of the colonnades
that make the city such a pleasure to walk at any time of year, you can still
see a crossbow bolt where it was shot into the ceiling. It must have been interesting to do business
then.
The city’s architecture was so crowded and complicated and
interesting, I’m surprised it didn’t show up as a location for one of the
versions of Assassin’s Creed. Traversing
the vertical labyrinth by leaping from tower to tower could have just the right
blend of intellectual challenge and adrenalin for an exceptional computer game.
Needless to say, the site lines would have been terrible and
it was an expensive and brute force solution to a problem tractable to more
efficient and elegant social and political alternatives. As the towers in London continue to rise,
I fear for the extraordinary visual beauty of the city.
Few of Bologna’s towers survive.
Yet, I have to admit I have a passion for
monumental, fortress architecture. Here
are two morning hike photos: one of the
town of Peille, France and one from the Four Corners in the southwest US. It’s interesting to consider what common exigencies,
caused them to make some similar choices and what role, if any, aesthetics
played.
1 comment:
I would bet that the towers began a pure pragmatism, but soon became status symbols with higher being better. The towers are not close enough that serious combat could occur before them, so there was no practical reason to keep one-upping the height of the towers.
The original towers functioned to control the streets and building in the immediate surrounds. They only needed to high enough to be difficult to storm from street or roof tops as well as give fire points down on the same. That doesn't require a height four to five times of the target.
Such towers were expensive so they became status objects. The merchant houses communicated their otherwise invisible wealth by making ever higher towers. That at least the bottom third or so had a practical defense function helped justify the cost. That the towers were extremely expensive to raise and maintain is evident by how few still remain. Clearly, they were incredibly susceptible to fire being little more than giant chimneys stuffed with fuel in the form of their wooden stairs. Once a fire created a draw up the tower, the interior would have turned near white hot in mere minutes. Likely, even a minor hiccup in a merchant house's cash flow would have showed in a matter of months in the maintenance of the tower.
Must have been nerve racking living in a regular building next to tower.
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