Inscription

Statement of OUV:

Brief synthesis

The serial property of The porticoes of Bologna is the one with the most representative porticoed system in the world. It is a catalogue representing all the historical and consequently architectural phases that have taken place, of which the selected 12 components are the most notable and prestigious outcomes.

These components, selected from the 62 km of Bolognese porticoes located in both central and peripheral areas, according to a criterion of representativeness, summarize the whole system. They compose a representative set of typologies, architectural features and urban and social functions in a very large chronological time frame. So in summary the attributes that convey the property’s OUV are the 5 just listed: long span of time, permeating element, functional variety, typological variety, social urban use.

The public portico, as a model of a particularly active social life at any time and in any climatic condition, is a very ancient model typology of global interest, an element adopted for centuries throughout the world. It finds in Bologna an exceptional and complete representation from the chronological, typological and functional point of view.

It is an architectural model but also a social one, a place of integration and exchange, in which the main protagonists of the city (citizens, migrants and students) live and share time and ideas, relationships and thoughts. It is a reference point for a sustainable urban lifestyle, where civil and religious spaces and residences of all social classes are perfectly integrated: a place of continuous interchange of human values that permeates and shapes city life.

This is the reason for which people who passed by Bologna over the centuries have appreciated and praised the portico, which is why the porticoed model were continuously exported elsewhere in Italy and Europe.

Furthermore in Bologna the porticoes are the exceptional result of a urban planning rules’ system. It has favoured the creation of an architectural typology that has been declined in a different way in the city of Bologna over the course of nine centuries. The maintenance of the legislation regulates the use, management and construction of the porticoes in the current body of legislation and the willingness to propose the portico model even where the modern expansion of the city does not imply the respect of the thirteenth-century Statute.

Finally, the social and community aspect is what distinguishes these covered spaces that were born as, and still remain, private property for public use. For these reasons, the community, but also the visitors, have always recognized and still recognize today the porticoed element as an identifying element of the city.

Justification for criteria

Criterion iv:

The series of Bologna’s porticoes, selected in the context of the porticoed system that permeates the old historical city and it is a significant presence in the contemporary one, represents in an exemplary manner an architectural typology of ancient origin and wide diffusion, never abandoned until today, but in continuous change through precise historical periods of the town’s transformation.

The series exemplarily represents, in the various chronological, typological, technological and functional declinations, a variety of porticoed building typologies, widespread among the houses of the working class and the aristocratic residences, the public and religious buildings, which were developed in the centuries from the 12th to the contemporary era. A wide range of materials and styles were employed, and still are today as a result of the city’s expansion and mutations over time.