The component comprises significant porticoed buildings around Piazza Cavour and Piazza Minghetti. Even after the unification of Italy, Bologna continued to build porticoes on both public and private buildings, designed in accordance with the architectural principles and the regulations of the medieval municipalities. More than in any other 19th century re-qualification of the historic city, this area presents the reinterpretation of the portico based on consolidated architectural models, which accommodated social requirements and modern lifestyles without losing the bonds with historic tradition.

Particularly, the area of the prestigious financial and commercial structures built along the modern thoroughfare of Via Farini presents an architectural style of clear historic connotation. Here the portico assumes a bourgeois and stately tone, very different of that of the surrounding area; it in fact became a model for the design of porticoed commercial quarters in European cities at the end of the 19th century.