Towers of Bologna
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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Somewhere in an alternative dimension where they're not fictional, Dagwood is very confused by his sudden boner and Blondie's dinner guests are scandalized.
At least we know why they're married now.
"The reasons for the construction of so many towers are not clear. One hypothesis is that the richest families used them for offensive/defensive purposes during the period of the investiture Controversy"
My guess is it was about who has the longest one.
That was actually one of the reasons I learned. The rich families wanted to show how rich they were so they built towers. Then other rich families built their own, preferably bigger, to show that they had ~~a bigger penis~~ more money.
Are there any facts to back that up? I don't know. I heard it ~25 years ago and I don't remember the source. Though, I was in Bologna around that time so possibly from a tour or possibly from some drunk guy at a party.
I don’t need a source to believe it. Humans are humans, and rich fucks always want to one up each other. Be it via who has the biggest rocket, mansion, boat, or, in the 12th century, tower.
Or horse. I wonder what the 12th century equivalent of a modified tailpipe was?
Chanfrons and caparisons.
Those are words I've never seen, thanks. I guess I can see that, imagine some smelly poor showing up on a nag in a burlap caparison then some medieval influencer on a Percheron with a purple silk caparison pulls up alongside? All the fair maidens faint right there!
It’s not about height, it’s about girth. You need a properly wide base and taper in order to ~~please~~ house so many soldiers.
Another hypothesis is that the city was taken over by wizards.
I choose to believe this one.
Hey, just because they use magic doesn't mean they're wizards. The biggest investiture tower, Urithiru, is actually associated with paladins
Nah, they just used them to show off. My tower is bigger than yours.
Yeah, somebody of influence built one, and the rest of the city that could afford to just followed.
The TikTok Stanley Cup craze of the 1100s.
Keeping up with the Giovannis.
So my Age of Empires build strategy was historically accurate
So is fast castle.
Just look what the Normans did to stabilise England.
Clearly the work of wizards.
local superstition suggests that those who climb the Tower of Asinelli to the top will never finish their studies—bad luck for students, but good news for those who never tire of learning!
That does sound a lot like wizards
I remember going up there with a friend when we were in study trip! oh wait...
Steeplejacks, but pretty much the same thing
Only drunker.
You laugh, but people who believe the Tartarian Empire conspiracy theory point to this as one of the things lost after the "mud floods" lol.
Obviously they were there to guard the cost-saving but insecurely designed trench leading to the small exhaust port.
Is this an AI image? Stop that.
I say that because some towers are leaning weirdly, and some windows are very diffused. It’s too low res to be to an “artistic renderin,” and it’s just looks messy (as an image). I’ve seen better renders of the towers of Bologna.
If it’s not AI, I’ll across out the top bir. I’m sorry I’m just super skeptical nowadays.
I'm sure it's an aerial image from that time
Yea that's why it's low rez, the government pigeons were still in development
It appears to be a wooden model. The image appeared in this blog post from 2022. At the end of the blog post, there is the wooden model. https://thepastabbatical.substack.com/p/the-towers-of-bologna
Yeah linking to a Wikipedia article.But throwing in random AI art is frustrating. This picture is not on the Wikipedia page.
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Visited Bologna about 8 years ago and visited these towers. There was a ton of supports at the base to keep it from falling down and even then it was still leaning pretty hard.
I met some Italians that doesn't care about it and think it's a waste of money.
Seems like it would be a nightmare to take them down. Demolition back then must have been pretty methodical, taking it apart from the top to bottom.
Much easier than that: just wait for a while and there won't be no tower anymore.
Either it falls down on its own or people come around to pick a few bricks and stones to build their own house.
Look around them. It would have to be like that today too. Too crowded.
Image isn't real
Are you suggesting that this isn't a real photograph of 12th century Bologna??
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Bologna+towers&ia=images&iax=images
Here are real images. Tell me how you can safely demolish those with explosives while guaranteeing it's not going to topple over adjacent buildings.
I'm sure the construction of towers is different from chimney stacks, but Fred Dibnah did it with a bunch of firewood and some shovels.
Do you see a direction without buildings there so it can topple over safely? That's the main issue.
These towers are significantly different from a mud brick stack, too. The fact that they're square is important. They're also built with different materials: instead of a lattice of uniform bricks and mortar, they are built with two layers of masonry filled with assorted stones and mortar. Not the kind of building we're used to demolish, making it harder to predict.
demolish the adjacent buildings first
Use the tower and demolish them all in one fell swoop! Demolitionists hate this one trick!
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Sounds like bologna to me.
Did we have an Assassin's Creed about that?
There's San Gimignano left of you want to get a real life feel of how it was. The town lies on an important route and local families showed off by showing their massive dongs of towers.
The present past youtube channel has a video on this: https://youtu.be/ikg3-GQLg3g
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And they were never able to replicate that design for the meat rolls
The only Italian town of towers I recognize is "San Gimignano". Shoutout to AC2.
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