Medieval Bologna was full of tall towers
openculture.com
openculture.com
To get a true sense of scale, here's the same view on Google Earth: https://earth.google.com/web/@44.48152905,11.33820409,94.604... You can see the towers that are still standing. They visibly stick out from the shorter buildings, but they're nowhere near as big as in the picture.
Which is a worse decision for a sport but makes them better for measurement.
Soccer’s trying to make their sport worse by standardizing, but they’re not there yet.
The model in Google Earth looks about right, at least if you compare it to this: https://static.bolognawelcome.com/immagini/ac/57/95/5d/20220...
It makes more sense if you see them from an opposing hill, but they literally tower.
I'd assume medieval Bologna was similar.
The indigenous civilization there (before it collapsed in the 1200s and its survivors migrated south and became the Aztec) built multi-storied pueblos, a number of which were even built into the rock.
If you're ever out around Coconico and Flagstaff, you're in for an absolute treat.
I had the tremendous luck of studying there 25 years ago when you could still bump into Umberto Eco having a coffee at the Students' Bar, when walking via Zamboni agglutinated most of the university life.
Glad you liked it, BTW. For some reason I feel I belong there, at least partially. Probably because those were really happy years for me.
There’s a YouTube video somewhere that explains all of this and shows a more accurate physical model (or as accurate as can be reasonably expected) that is located somewhere in Bologna, which suggests that there were quite a few towers but not that many and not that tall as shown here. In any case it still had an impressive skyline for its day.
If I remember to do so, I’ll come back here and post a link.
Isn't that really weird? I realise that most people experience the internet only through their phone browser and social media apps, where it's hard to do many of the common and simple things one can do on a computer, like pasting a link. How is it that those extremely fiddly interfaces have come to be the norm?
Phones trade ease of use for ease of access. They allow people to be online and participating in an online discussion when and where a traditional computer would be prohibitive or inconvenient. And as a trade off those people aren't always able to do (or conveniently do) something they would do on those traditional computers. Most people most of the time seem to find that an acceptable tradeoff. And to be fair to those most people, I write far more than I copy and paste links so it's not unreasonable to find that tradeoff to be acceptable.
In architecture, some of the more interesting I have seen are Guangdong's Diaolou (碉樓) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaolou - but of course we have castles, bridges, etc. IIRC John Young, architect and Cryptome maintainer, made some interesting studies in to public spaces as "the architecture of control". When you look at mass transit stations, for instance, there are so many control elements which we consider normal - lines, signage, threats of prosecution, physical barriers, choke points, hidden connections, video, etc. - but are actually explicit acknowledgement of risk, danger, threat and control.
But something as simple as staple foods (deriving from settled agriculture and thus central control), or the entire field of logistics, operations research and indeed computing can also be linked directly to force projection.
Truly, we are base creatures.
The product of the human brain has escaped the control of human hands. This is the comedy of science. - Karel Čapek (1921), inventor of the term 'robot'
I think part of the motivation for the Crusades, was redirect those feuds elsewhere. And it worked somewhat.
Like walls they were vulnerable to sapping - digging under the structure and causing it to collapse. More so than walls due to their height. And later, cannon fire. Which is why along with castles they started going out of favour about the 16th century, except as cheap observation posts, such as on borders, and non-military structures such as lighthouses.
As living quarters, much like castles they were not as practical as simpler manor homes. But in a very violent, somewhat lawless era, they were often used by the wealthy/powerful.
But seeing ideas and opportunities of 500 years ago, that took dozens of years to take off, might help us better understand the opportunities we have now
Aisha Ray - The Flying Train of Tartaria (electric) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9nhe9mPHKLI
The article is actually quite disappointing as it’s really just clickbait content for a video that I have no interest in watching.
Its not like they rented out office space like in downtown Manhattan. Also no factories that required thousands of workers. So I'm not sure the modern analogy of square footage applies.
They fell out of favor by the 16th century. Coincidentally about the same time as cannon starting being very effective.
Then again part of being a true citizen of Bologna is to have incorrect information on some of the landmarks there.
They were pretty common in every big enough city in Italy at that time.
Another good example would be Perugia. At a certain point it was even called “turrita”, literally “of towers”. As of now there’s only one left, Sciri Tower[0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_degli_Sciri?wprov=sfti1#...
(My apologies for the snark)