Hidden Treasures

30-10-2017 | Style & Culture

Written by: Paola Foschi

Hidden Treasures and Missing Treasures: Roman Streets and Temples, Patrician Palaces and Gentile Towers

Walking with the Romans

To trace the history of such a significant stretch of city as the one home to the Hotel Baglioni, we must trace the origins of the entire city, to the colony that the Romans founded more than 2,000 years ago on the strategic edge of the hills that in the center of the Po Valley overlook the flat lands towards the Po. Of course we know that the building structures of the city of Bononia in the period before the birth of Christ and the advent of the imperial form of government were modest structures, made of wood and brick rather than stone. But on this very block delimited by what is now Via Indipendenza, near Via Porta di Castello and behind the Ghisilardi Fava palace, there was a temple made up of imposing structures, a high podium, an internal structure with three cells, a colonnaded front facing the current Via Ugo Bassi (the decumanus maximus); of this temple, next to which, along Via Manzoni, there was a covered colonnade. Not much remains because it must have had wooden structures and terracotta decorations.

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But when the city was renovated in the age of Emperor Augustus and even beyond, in the time of Nero, the new stone structures made it clear that in that block bordering the northernmost hinge of the city, the current Via Indipendenza, and the first decumanus north of the Via Emilia-Via Ugo Bassi there were buildings of great cultural, political and economic value. Impressive public buildings were erected along the streets renovated with sturdy paving of trachyte blocks from the Euganean Hills: west of Via Porta di Castello, a large temple twin to the one discovered beneath Palazzo Fava in the city's capitolium; beneath the Medieval Museum, Palazzo Fava, and the Hotel Baglioni, a commercial food building, the macellum.

A sacred area and a commercial area, separated by an open space for trading, but joined by a portico that added monumentality to the connection between the two public structures; a few private tabernas completed this truly integrated commercial center of antiquity.

Around these buildings ran imposing and efficient paved streets, which delimited the regular blocks of the urban center, one located under the current Via Indipendenza and the other under the buildings facing Via Manzoni, but not in close correspondence with this street. In fact, it can be noted that, perhaps due to the presence of the imperial fortress, which we will talk about, the medieval road system slowly moved northwards and the new buildings covered the road base for a few metres, narrowing it considerably.

In the foreground are the medieval towers that belonged to the Ariosti and Carbonesi families, which stood in front of the cathedral of San Pietro, the remains of which are incorporated into the current palace of the Grand Hotel Majestic «già Baglioni», an 18th-century engraving.

Overlooking the walls

When Roman civilization, exhausted by the passage of time, gave in to the innovations that were advancing and transforming it-that is, when Italy's borders were not enough to contain the invasions and occupations of barbarian peoples and they began to become part of the human and social landscape of the peninsula-the cities sought to defend, on small islands surrounded by walls, what had been built over centuries of civilization.

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Scenarios and ferment of Bologna

When Guido Baglioni moved to the Umbilicum Urbis, Bologna experienced a period of great fervor and stood out as one of Italy's most dynamic centers, both economically and culturally, thanks to brilliant entrepreneurs, astute public administrators, and an authoritative array of intellectuals and admired university professors. Bologna, with a population of 172,000, is increasingly becoming a hub for the country's road and rail communications.

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