BED AND BREAKFAST IN BOLOGNA   ACCOMMODATION IN BOLOGNA   ERBORISTERIA   WEBMASTER

In the 17th Century the strategic plan that began one thousand years earlier was almost completed: Papal supremacy revealed itself through ninety-six monastic complexes which made Bologna a city of monasteries.
 

The Church's strategic plan involving Bologna began in the 6th Century AD., when the Benedictines established their monasteries in four different places, at both ends of the "decumanum maximum" and "cardo", outside the circle of the selenite walls. Afterwards other monastic orders settled along the radial roads of this area, near the "Torresotti" circle of walls (the Carmelites in St. Martino Maggiore, the Augustines, in St. Giacomo Maggiore, the Lateranenses in St. Giovanni in Monte, the Dominicans in St. Domenico, the Franciscans in St. Francesco, the regular canons in St. Salvatore).  So a particular urban structure took shape: the monastic complex - consisting of the church, the bell-tower, the largest part of the building where the monks lived, with cloisters and porticoes, rooms and cells, chapels, refectories and cellars - was in the centre of a group of little streets where "the poor" built their "portichetti", that is to say the "houses in a row"; two rows of houses facing into two parallel streets, with space in the middle for the vegetable gardens.
The social context of this period, in fact, did not get rid of the enormous differences between the rich and the poor, but at the same time gathered together the "common people", by means of a communitarian project based on anti-individualism, but preserving individual origins.

The counter-Reformation found in Bologna its greatest centre for didatic image production.
"Order and beauty" were the two goals to follow. Here too, churches grew more and more into rich picture galleries.
Towards the end ofthe 16th Century theCarracci created a school which even provided Rome with some of the greatest Counter-reformation painters. "Order and beauty" was, in fact, what the Church wanted to achieve for didactic purposes. In the popular field of telling religious stories through images, great works were carried out in St. Dominic, with the marquetries of the wooden choir, the work of Fra Damiano da Brescia, to which the tables surrounding "Our Lady of !iI the Rosary" followed, the work of the pupils: of the Carracci school. In the National Picture Gallery there is an extremely interesting collection of paintings representative of that period, this exceptional group of painters includes the Carracci (Agostino, Ludovico and Annibale), Guido Reni, Francesco AIbani, Spada, Domenichino, Guercino, Tiarini, Mastelletta, Cavedoni, Cignani, Cantarini, Franceschini. Other frescoes by these artists can also be found in the noble palaces of the town. 22 important church-picture galleries of Bologna, have collections covering the period 14th_17th Century.

ln the Palazzo Davia Bargellini, No. 44, Strada Maggiore there is the Museum of Industrial Art and the Davia Bargellini Gallery which houses paintings of great value together with documents of the bourgeoise and the noble house from the Renaissance but mainly from the Baroque period. Another important group of paintings it to be found at the Municipal Art Collections in the Municipal Palace.
 

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General - Environment - Iron and Etruscan Age - Roman Age - Patron Saint- The Commune - Alma mater studiorum - Re Enzo - Porticoes - St Peter - Gothic - 14th Century - Piazza Maggiore - Aristocratic palaces - Brick and other stones - Early 15th Century - Archiginnasio - Counter Reformation Renaissance - 16th Century - Great portico ribbons - Frescoes in palaces - The "scenographic" city -  Napoleon's republics - Fall of Church power - The Restoration - Haussmann style - The new Century - Floreal style - Rationalism - World War - Active preservation - Around 2000