Urban Planning and Physical Structures

56 Bocchi

Chapter 3 Shaping the City: Urban Planning and Physical Structures

Francesca Bocchi

Antiquity: From Felsina to Bononia

The roots of the city of Bologna extend deep into Antiquity. In the present-day urban zone Etruscan villages consisting of circular huts (called Villanovan culture)1 existed by the 9th century BC. By the 7th century the villages, now connected, gave life to the city of Felsina, which became the most important urban center of the Po Valley. Residential buildings acquired well-structured and durable forms and the remains of industrial activity have been found in numerous parts of today’s city. Felsina was situated in an area geographically favorable to urban development; in the high plain between the Aposa stream to the east and the Ravone to the west, at the point where the hills began to ascend. The sanctuary of the city (today the Facoltà di Ingegneria) was built on one of the offshoots of the hills (acropoli). Other evidence of Etruscan religios- ity can be found in various areas of the city, for example, the two large memorial stones (cippi) that marked the monumental entrance to a burial site in the area that is today the Via Fondazza. The invasion of the Gauls in the 4th century BC ended Etruscan government in northern Italy, and Felsina, like the other prin- cipal cities, disappeared, shrunken and transformed into a vicus. Archaeological remains from the 4th to the 2nd century BC are few, indicating that buildings during that period were not constructed with durable materials. In the 3rd century BC the Romans appeared north of the Apennines, laying the basis for their conquest of Cisalpine Gaul with the founding of the colony of Rimini (Arminium, 268 BC). The Gauls were definitively defeated at the end of the century, eliminating any obstacle to Roman expansion in northern Italy. The construction of the Via Aemilia (187 BC, which ran west from Rimini along the high plain, reached the river Po at Piacenza, thus creating the conditions for the establishment of the Roman colony of Bononia on the site of the ancient Etruscan Felsina.

1 A label created by Count Giovanni Gozzadini after his discovery of a necropolis near Bologna in 1853. Artifacts from Villanovan culture are found in the Museo Archeologico di Bologna.

Map 3.1 Map of Bologna: walls, quarters, streams, and canals. Design: Fernando Lugli.

The urban structure of Roman Bononia determined the urbanistic history of Bologna for the following two millennia (Map 3.1). It was quadrangular in shape, with sides of 600 meters. Articulation of the cardo and decumanus (the two major intersecting streets) is still quite evident today in that section of the city which was continuously inhabited, even if now 6 meters below the sur- face. The decumanus constituted part of the Via Aemilia, whose archaeological remains of paving stones can be found now under Via Rizzoli and Via Ugo Bassi. The cardo maximus ran through the inhabited area from north to south