*in the map at top, shading indicates the historic city center and red represents extant porticoes. The map below scales this information to include I Portici di San Luca. The church stands in the lower left (southwest) corner of the image, shaded in gray. Also shaded in gray are the soccer stadium and Bologna's major cemetery, the Certosa, which connect to a portico spur constructed under Mussolini.
Bologna’s porticos, like the ones pictured in the large photograph above, are the products of late-medieval municipal codes and interpretative compliance. The passageways are nearly continuous within the city walls, creating a communal space that is the sum total of individual contributions. Such porticos are a common enough phenomenon around the world, though rarely have I seen them executed with such continuity and creativity. What makes the phenomenon even more interesting is its 3.5 kilometer extension outside of the city fabric to the ancient shrine of S. Luca.
The image on the far left shows the portico’s mouth, just outside one of Bologna’s old city gates and what was once a peripheral canal. This portico—unlike those inside the city gate—was designed by a single architect. Only later did buildings grow onto it, plugging into its archways and matching their facades to its rhythm. The buildings and their portico host continue for awhile until, at a dramatic, curvilinear Baroque gateway (second image from the left), the passageway crosses the road and heads uphill, the road branching to run at its side. The road allows the portico to retain its characteristic one-sidedness. If the road passes through, as it does in the center image, then the portico simply reverses itself to accommodate the change. Landings and open-air chapels punctuate the walk’s meditative monotony until finally, after a damned healthy hike, the portico ramps up to a pavilion and doubles back to meet the entrance of S. Luca. The two images to the far right show the final rise and the view back over the city.
John Habraken says it best: "the same form, during successive centuries, passed under sequential control of different kinds of agents pursuing different objectives. Beginning in the collective imagination of inhabitants, it passed into the realm of bureaucratic regulation of an urban fabric, ultimately ending in a symbolic gesture professionally executed by a prestigious architect. The development took centuries to unfold. Thus the common gives rise to architecture."
*map at top scanned from Leonardo Benevolo's History of the City
*in the map at top, shading indicates the historic city center and red represents extant porticoes. The map below scales this information to include I Portici di San Luca. The church stands in the lower left (southwest) corner of the image, shaded in gray. Also shaded in gray are the soccer stadium and Bologna's major cemetery, the Certosa, which connect to a portico spur constructed under Mussolini.
