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.
