One cannot help noticing Bologna’s porticoes, spanning a length of 40 km all across the town center.
Nonetheless, only few know their origin, dated back to as far as the year 1000, and the reason behind their creation.
Bologna lived a boom of new inhabitants, of course including numerous students rushing to the first modern university in the world, and the porticoes have represented an innovative solution: no, the new citizens weren’t hosted under the arcades, but over them, in the rooms added horizontally to the houses, with the porticoes serving as a supporting structure.
When necessity is the mother of invention.
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