Le Due Torri

    The tower of the Asinelli and that of the Garisendi are the most known monument of the city and the most characteristic. Bologna had many towers that were in great part  have been destroyed by earthquakes, when not pulled down because of fear or danger or building necessities, and because of the frequent confiscations during the  fights between opposing factions. Very likely both the Asinelli and the Garisenda would have been demolished too, if they hadn't already become a distinctive landmark of the city to be proud of. 
    The origin of most of the genteel towers of Bologna goes back to its communal period in the 12th and 13th centuries., when the city had almost 200 hundred towers, more than the bigger than the nearby Florence. However, no other tower ever equalled the height of the Asinelli or the slant or the Garisenda.
    In the towers, the walls at the basement are sometimes wider than the empty space inside, while they get thinner upwards. The walls are made of two layers of solid bricks, an inner one and an external one between which a mixture of pebbles and lime. The basement is stoned with long  parallelepipedons of selenite.
 
    Torre Asinelli

    It was erected between 1109 and 1119  by the same family of which it still bears the name, although the ownership passed to the City Council already in the 13th century. Its height (97.2 meters) made it famous from the beginning.  It must have been famous also for its solidità if in every century it  was "tested"è by earthquakes and lightnings. It was thus repaired during most of the centuries between the 14th and the 20th.  The western side has a projection of 2.23 meters. The building or small fortress that circles the base (and badly restored in 1921), was built to host the soldiers on guard in 1488 and replaced a similar wooden  one. The inner stairs were completed in 1684 and then repaired and largely rebuilt anew throughout the centuries. 

There are many anecdotes regarding its origin and the most curious and interesting is the legend of a poor who unearthed a treasure while working in the basement of a house with many donkeys. This treasure was kept secret by the man until his son fell in love with the daughter of the first  gentleman of the city. The poor asked the man the hand of his daughter for his son. The  gentleman answered that he wouldn't give his daughter in wife to the poor man's son, until he hadn't built a tower so high to be higher than all the others in the city.
 
    Torre Garisenda
 

    It was erected by Filippo and Oddo Garisendi at the same time the Asinelli  tower was built. It is proved that it wasn't intentionally built with the slant we can see today, but that it became so bent due to a subsiding of the terrain and of the foundations, very likely when it was built, so that the height was shortened compared to the original project. The tower is 48m and 16cm high  with a projection of slightly more than 2 meters. After the Garisendi, the tower passed to the Zambeccari, the Draper's Guild, theRanuzzi, the Malvezzi-Campeggi, and the Franchetti. Today it is owned by the City Council. A small church was connected to its basement before it was pulled down in 871. Between 1887 and 1889  it was isolated from the small houses that surrounded it and it was stoned with ashlar of selenite as can be observed today. 
    There is an anecdote that regards this tower too. The story goes that it was built by a Garisendi who, having asked in wife a girl of the Asinelli family, was answered that, had he built a tower that rivalled their own in beauty, would have been granted the girl's hand. The Garisendi then would have sought to build the tower so that it touched the other one at the top.  

 
 
 
 
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