Overlooking the walls

30-10-2017 | Style & Culture

Written by: Giancarlo Roversi

Overlook the walls: the barbarians arrive

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. The central area that ran along the main hinge of Via Indipendenza abruptly became a suburb adjacent to the walls: we must imagine that along Via Manzoni and Via del Monte ran a wall almost 4 meters high of quadrangular selenite blocks, setting itself wherever possible on Roman roads, which with their solid structure formed an inimitable base. Only the gate of San Pietro, along Via Indipendenza, allowed entry and exit towards the north and the plain.

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Affacciati alle mura | Overlooking the walls

The territory outside this imposing barrier was left to enemy raids and plunder and soon became «the destroyed ancient city», the portion of Roman city still recognizable as such, but now reduced to ruins.

We do not know exactly when the circle was erected, stripping the large sacred or civil buildings built by the Romans of the comfortable blocks already cut and worked, but certainly very soon, when the streets, like the one found under the Hotel Baglioni, in the same direction as Via Manzoni, were still in good condition, when it was preferred to retreat to a smaller space and - as they say - save what could be saved, perhaps in the first centuries of the Christian era. In fact, the wall included the cathedral inside; and moreover, the city gate to the north took its name from the saint to whom the cathedral was and is dedicated, Saint Peter, the first protector of Bologna.

Thus, little by little, large and elegant public buildings were replaced by private homes, and vast areas open for sacred ceremonies or negotiations were replaced by vegetable gardens and courtyards, adapting to the new demands of survival what was at the hands of the great civilization that had disappeared.

Christianity, moreover, had done the same: it had superimposed its churches on pagan temples, on festivals dedicated to the expressions of nature, on equinoxes, solstices, on festivals in which the stages of the life of Christ and His Mother were remembered. In short, everything changed, but in that part of the city an expression of the great Roman Empire at its end remained evident for a long time, the imperial fortress that occupied and reinforced the important north-west corner around Via Porta di Castello.

We also don't know the date of construction of the fortress, but we can get an idea by noting that two imposing stone arches still visible in a room of the Medieval Museum, which are the last remnant of the fortress, are still measured in Roman feet and not yet in medieval Bolognese feet, using reused Roman bricks. A clue that those who built those structures still thought like Roman bricklayers and stonecutters and had Roman material at their disposal; above these solid arches was built the Conoscenti tower, now fully medieval, but perhaps not long after the destruction of the imperial fortress in 1115.

Aristocratic families

Directly opposite the block that would first become the Archbishop's Seminary and then the Hotel Baglioni, the cathedral was built, the main center of Catholic devotion and liturgy, the seat of the bishop and canons, and the church where all the city's Christians were baptized. The baptistery, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, in fact, occupied a stretch of road directly in front of the cathedral's façade, as in many cities, where this structure, indispensable to Christian life, still exists: in Parma, Florence, and Pistoia. The cathedral, moreover, was a small church, which in 1141 was destroyed by fire and immediately rebuilt in new Romanesque forms.

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Hidden Treasures

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.

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