Bologna's towers

They built them to be closer to the heavens or further from the muck of the street. To scan for marauders coming over the Appenine Mountains or to one-up the Joneses next door. Craning your neck at the Piazza di Porta Ravegnana, one can appreciate all of these hypotheses.

What we do know is that a field of slender four-sided monoliths once reached toward the sky here and that one of them, the Torre Garisenda, was the subject of verses in Dante's "Inferno." Clouds floating in the opposite direction of the tower's tilt created the impression it was about to crash into the ground, the poet remarked. The lines are inscribed at the base of the tower, which was taller in Dante's time. For safety's sake, it was shortened in the 1350s.

The Torre Garisenda is a tale of survival.

Until recently it was thought that as many as 180 such torri existed in the city, which inspired conjectural drawings like the one below and, in turn, lazy headline writers to describe old Bologna as a "medieval Manhattan."

By Toni Pecoraro. From Wikimedia Commons.

In a healthy reminder that history is not always settled, researchers have found that the reliance on old real-estate deeds led to a double-counting of many towers that had changed hands and were listed under different family names. So subtract 100 from 180. Still, for travelers in the Reno and Savena river valleys, Bologna must have been a fearsome sight.

Grisenda's sister, the much taller Torre degli Asinelli, can be climbed for a 5 euro fee. Tickets are not available on site. Purchase them on your phone here; a PDF for entry will be mailed to you in two minutes. You can also try the Bologna Welcome office in Piazza Maggiore, but it is one of the most heavily "ratioed" institutions in the city. I recommend doing this early in your visit because it provides a better orientation of how Bologna is laid out than any map can. From the top you are reminded why Bologna is nicknamed "La Rossa," or the red city.

In the photo below, view-seekers atop the Torre Prendiparte can be seen at left. We are 100 feet above them. At 320 feet, the Asinelli tower is taller than all the skyscrapers in the metropolitan area, save for the Unipol Tower ― Italy's ninth-tallest building.

Kids scramble for a view.

Much to see in the photo below: At mid-frame center-left, crowds of people on Via Rizzoli enter and exit Piazza Nettuno (obscured at left). Scanning right we see the smallish Torre Scappi. Further to the right and in the foreground is the Torre Azzoguidi. Towers aplenty! At far right is the rear of Bologna's official cathedral, dedicated to St. Peter.

Below, the Piazza Maggiore and the city's most important church, San Petronius, at left. The green dome at left foreground is the Church of Santa Maria Della Vita.

The rear of the San Pietro Duomo is flanked by by the Torre Azzoguidi, left, and the Torre Prendiparte, right.

Palaces and mansions dot the hills to the south, called i colli bolognesi.

Some four miles away, San Luca Sanctuary sits atop Colle della Guardia hill. I walked up there the other day.

All alone at the top of the Asinelli Tower:

The Asinelli, one of the tallest structures, modern or medieval, in all of Italy, as seen at sunrise from Via Rizzoli.

A street-level view of the Prendiparte Tower. It is a bed and breakfast now. I wonder how that works.

Despite being run by a bunch of sour old ladies, the Museo Medioevale at Via Manzoni 4 is worth a brief visit, if only for its detailed model of Middle Ages Bologna, in which I count about 50 towers (fewer than 20 remain today), and a 13th-century bronze pitcher in the shape of a horse and rider that spoke to me for whatever reason.

Well, you might ask, what was Dante Alighieri doing in Bologna? Some historians believe he lived here for brief periods and that he may have studied at the University of Bologna ― Italy's oldest ― though there is no firm evidence for either proposition. If he didn't, the university's list of distinguished professors and alumni will not suffer from his absence:

Irnerius, the revered "lantern" of Roman jurisprudence, founded the law school. Petrarch and Copernicus went to school here. Umberto Eco taught at the university. So did the anatomist Luigi Galvani, whose discovery that severed frogs legs would twitch in response to an electric charge made him a founding father of the neurosciences. The word "galvanized" derives from his name. My alma mater produced Kourtney Kardashian, Nicole Richie and the guy who opened Al Capone's vault. So, um ... go Cats, I guess.