Bologna Porticoes
— — the warm red shade the city walks under.
Not only on a wall.
“There are about forty kilometres of porticoes in the old centre of Bologna, more if you count the climb out to San Luca. The covered walks were written into the city in 1288, when the council ordered every new building to carry one. The result is a city you can cross in the rain without opening an umbrella. The Portico di San Luca runs three and a half kilometres up the hill to the sanctuary, with six hundred and sixty-six arches, the longest covered walkway in the world. Locals call Bologna La Rossa for the warm terracotta. In the right late light, that is the colour the streets keep.
Bologna Porticoes, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The porticoes are the covered arcades that line the streets of Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna and the seat of the oldest continuously operating university in Europe. The historic centre carries about 42 kilometres of porticoes; the wider city counts roughly 62. They reach from Piazza Maggiore, where the Basilica of San Petronio anchors the old centre, out along Strada Maggiore and Via Zamboni, then over the city walls and up Colle della Guardia to the Sanctuary of San Luca. Twelve representative sections were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2021. Bologna sits about 54 metres above sea level, north of the Apennines, halfway between Florence and Venice on the old Via Emilia.
The columns are mostly brick faced in plaster, set on stone bases, supporting timber or vaulted ceilings that step up and down the line of each street. The earliest surviving wooden portico belongs to Casa Isolani on Strada Maggiore and dates from the mid-13th century; its three oak beams stand close to nine metres tall. A 1288 municipal statute folded the porticoes into the city's building code, requiring private owners to carry the public walk past their façades. Bologna is called La Rossa for the warm red of its brick and roof tile, a colour that holds across the old centre at every elevation.
The porticoes are free, open to walk at any hour, and connect almost every street of the historic centre under cover. The longest single stretch is the Portico di San Luca, which climbs about 3.8 kilometres from the Meloncello arch through 666 arches up Colle della Guardia to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca; the climb takes most walkers about an hour. The sanctuary itself is open daily from morning to early evening, with shorter hours in winter. Inside the old centre, the Portico del Pavaglione runs past the Archiginnasio, the first home of the University of Bologna, founded in 1088.