Bologna urban planning - Great Portico ribbons

By then the portico already was the symbol of the local civilisation. The European value of the silk and hemp industries, were the focal pointofanactivity which accompanied the expansion into the countryside the image of great "portico ribbons".

From the 17th to the 18th Century the city saw the silk and hemp industries important to Europe, flourish along the many canals of the town and attempt to expand this wealth over its countryside by means of land reclamation and agricultural intervention. (The increase in population in the countryside was 40%).

Before expanding, the town built long strips of porticoes leading to the religious buildings: the portico connecting, the present Porta Mazzini to the church of the Alemann (1631): the great portico of the Ricovero (1667) and finallythe portico of St. Luca, about four kilometres long, completed in 1739, after 65 years' work, which connects Porta Saragozza with the Santuario della Madonna di St. Luca on the Monte della Guardia. This great portico, with the Arco del Meloncello symbolised the moment when the town, by then aware of its own fundamental "leitmotiv", rich in civil significance, exalted it without betraying it to a religious purpose (the portico was as ever "people convenient"), transforming it into a spectacular game with nature.