The forgotten medieval CITY OF CASTLES

[Music] greetings i'm shad and i want to talk about the forgotten medieval city of castles now you might be wondering hang on there's a medieval city of castles i've never heard of it well that's the forgotten part but even if you have heard of this city and know about it there is an oversight that i feel has been done to the point where people have actually not realized that these buildings of this city are most indeed castles but even if you don't understand the castle component of the city it is still one of the most remarkable medieval cities of all time i'm referring to the fortified towers of medieval bologna just have a look at them this is unbelievable in its prime in its heyday it is estimated that this city had between 110 to 200 fortified towers now what classifies these towers as castles that i want to get into because understanding the more precise definition of castles we will see that these fortify towers actually falling into the role of what many medieval castles were like and i want to discuss it a bit more the role and utility of these fortified towers also the parallels between these fortified towers and other fortified towers that are either castles or attached to castles so we can actually see a much more distinct parallel and also the circumstances the amazing unique circumstances that caused these castles to be built it is amazing and so much so when you look at images and also artistic recreations of what this city looked like in its prime it's a bit hard to realize you're looking at a medieval city this city has often been called the medieval manhattan for good reason it's amazing and what i remember when i first saw images of this city i thought i was looking at some type of steampunk recreation and when i found out that no there's actually a real historical city i was enamored and just entranced i had to learn more and also i had to learn about those circumstances that caused this incredible thing this is something that is as close to like fantasy as you could almost get in actual fact when i was looking at it i was like i was looking at a more historical depiction or a possibility of what a you know real-life version of lutherdo would look like lutheran if you've read the mistborn series uh by brandon sanderson there is a fantasy uh city called lutherdale i believe it's like i hope i'm getting the city name right but he described it kind of as a city of castles where these are powerful noble families would build these massive cathedral fortified cathedral edifice castles fortresses as a sign of wealth but they were made for proper use in actual conflict and it was justified brilliantly in that book but this is almost a real life historical parallel where these fortified towers were built by the wealthy families of this city for protection but also for conflict it's absolutely amazing i got again i'm just enamored by this thing but before we begin i'm very grateful to let you know that this video is sponsored by 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the design you see there if someone wanted to build a tower they weren't restricted to this design so we shouldn't think that these are just fancy towers that the nobility wanted to build in the city as a statement of wealth and influence which indeed they were but if that was the goal wealth influence but also the bragging rights of having a really tall or one of the tallest towers doesn't explain why they're fortified other types of towers that exist in this period are belfrees for instance so bell towers also gothic-like towers as well usually had bells in them on top of that watch towers were one impressive edifices that were just made to you know be eye-catching and stuff that were combined with the type of cathedrals that we see or built through all throughout the medieval period if they really want to build something fancy that's what they could have built yet they went an additional step to give them actual military function but the other thing that we need to consider is why just build towers in the first place yes towers are eye-catching they're big they're tall so it's hard to miss them but there are other things that you can make to show our display of wealth just through really artistic stonework statues really amazing manners with the most elaborate kind of either tile work to making murals to the materials used any number of things and that we've seen historically have been done as really big you know look at me how how wealthy am i statements of power and wealth all those things so the fact that the nobility of the city chose to build fortified towers is very significant it means that no these are more than just fancy you know towers which is why i feel it's a little misleading to just simply call them towers because the term tower doesn't inherently carry the fortified aspect the term castle does but there are many types of castles and this is where i think people have also gotten misled as to not identify these buildings as actual castles is because they don't generally fit the stereotypical depiction of what a medieval castle looks like if you're not too familiar with medieval castles because when you start to look at what many medieval castles were and how they were designed like these are actually very similar to media and medieval don john don john is a bit of a complicated term originally it was quite synonymous with the term keep the primary fortified structure of a medieval castle and it's quite accurate to identify these buildings as don johns in english the term keep arose to mean essentially the same thing and so do you refer to one verse keep versus don john in the modern day keep has been the term that has become more popularized to identify the primary fortified building and don john interestingly enough has evolved to mean the primary fortified tower which is why even in a modern sense it's quite accurate to call these towers don john's both in the medieval context of being a primary fortified building but even the modern context of being the primary fortified tower they're towers they're fortified don john keeps they work well what did they call them in the medieval period i have not been out of to find in actual fact getting a lot of detailed information on the city and these towers are a bit difficult i actually even had to go in to video tours of the towers that had images of the informational diagrams they had inside some of these towers and then screenshot them to get some informational diagrams and even these ones i got blurry and uh and so i wish a lot of this information was digitized but it doesn't seem like it is so short of traveling there myself i've done my best to get some deeper information about them unfortunately what they actually called them in the period i can't really find out uh the language of medieval bologna most likely would have been latin but it had frankish influences because the city was conquered by charlemagne at one point but was also then later held by the holy roman empire which is mostly medieval germany but for the heyday when these medieval towers were built the city was actually independent which is remarkable and it got its independence through allying with a thing called the lombard league it did require winning a battle against frederick barbarossa himself but once they won that battle they negotiated a thing called the peace of constance in 1183 which was the catalyzing event that gave the city of bologna its independence and was also the catalyzing thing that created the circumstances which rose i caused these castles to be built but as i was mentioning before we see french german and italian latin influences in this position but it should also go to tell you that this city sat in like a crossroads at once it was the frontier outpost of the byzantine empire and then the carolingian empire and then the um a holy roman german empire and then it became independent as a crossroad trading hub also a center of learning because one of the earliest medieval universities was built in the city and tremendous wealth flowed through this city during this time in terms of bologna's useful position which influenced its growth into a trading hub this utility was actually compounded increased due to the fact that it was almost a center point for several trading canals which allowed trading ships to come and go and get access to other parts uh throughout europe now of course they wouldn't extend to every part of europe but the fact that it was used as a center point for trading canals that meant that just tremendous wealth would have flowed into this city the occupants within the actual city centre the main part were mostly artisans traders like really wealthy people and the uh the less wealthy people obviously wouldn't be able to afford real estate within the location and they lived further and further on the outskirts not to say you wouldn't come across poor people in their city of course that would have been beggars and other things but no the owners of property became very very wealthy and bologna just bloomed into a trading but also a place of education and art there's even like dedicated museum showcases of just about bologna because there is tremendous artistic religious just amazing things came out of this city it was a very influential city became very wealthy and what's amazing about it it was mostly independent which as you will see if we've not already mentioned created one of the most unique environments in the medieval period which therefore gave rise to literally a city of castles so did they call them towers these are don johns castles hard for me to be able to find but in terms of the strict definition of what a castle is yes these towers most definitely filled that role which is why it is more than justified to say this is a city of castles but let's take a closer look at some of these towers so we can actually see just how fortified they really are unfortunately not too many have survived to this day although there are artistic recreations depictions and there are also older you know depictions of them as well because they didn't have a strong a really good grasp of foundations in terms of castle construction they understood to a certain extent but they didn't have nearly as well as extent as we do as we have in the modern day and as a result a lot of these uh castle towers that were built were not very stable and needed to be uh dismantled to say that falling over and crushing other buildings and people because some of them reached up to 100 meters tall like that's crazy but that's the tallest on average they were like between 30 and 50 meters but that is still massive but also just a point at the stability problem one of the surviving towers of bologna uh they're called the two towers uh the smaller one you'll see it has quite a significant lean to it you've heard of the leaning terrapisia that's also a result of not fully understanding having a proper foundation when you build something really really heavy a lot of the castle towers of bologna fell into that issue as well as we even see with the surviving ones but there are other surviving towers as well but we can look at closely and get an idea of some really interesting aspects to it specifically the fortifications but remember the estimate number of these castle towers is so i i think i said 110 before it might have been 80 to 200. it's hard to know exactly because there are different records and from different periods uh referring to certain towers and some people believe that the same tower gets counted twice when it's referenced later on in another document and some people believe it's a different tower but still even if you went as low as 80 that is a crazy amount in a single medieval city uh it's just unbelievable so one of the key features that you'll notice in the design they're all square towers this is somewhat indicative of the period in which they were made which is the 12th and 13th century but it's a mistake to think that no rounded shapes were used in fortification of the past the romans had rounded half towers most definitely in a lot of their fortifications uh so rounded towers were used earlier than people think but they weren't as common that much i believe is true through my own you know research and study and seems to be indicative of the towers that we see in bologna one of the first things that you will notice about these towers aside from them being square is take a note of how many windows are on these towers one of the key principles of medieval fortifications that windows can be a massive weak point because it's an inch possible entry point that people can break in through and so you avoid large windows at the very least close to ground level and when you do see windows added to a proper and by the way i'm not referring to renovated castles castles after they lost their military purpose and people still wanted to live in them to make them more livable they often added larger windows sometimes on the bottom level to make them you know more livable as i mentioned a good example is windsor castle windsor castle is such a heavily renovated castle that you wouldn't be able to call it a true fortified castle anymore because it has too many weak points they're thrown out the uh military application and they wanted to turn it into a palace but if you look at a proper fortified castle of medieval period the times in which they do have windows they're going to be several levels off ground level at least or at the going further they will never have windows facing the external vulnerable sides of the castle they can have windows facing the internal bailey which is more secure or they would have windows on parts of the castle that aren't meant to be fortified well the uh fortified towers of bologna follow that exact same pattern we do not see windows close to ground level and then as you go up you do see openings but these openings aren't necessarily windows oh and by the way one of the types of windows that they would have close while i was talking about large windows but arrow slits or arrow loops are a different matter because those are defensive things to shoot through and so yeah if they do have windows on vulnerable sides or closer to the ground they'll be arrow slits now sometimes it looks like there are some arrow slits on these towers but they could be types of bracing that was added after the fact to try and strengthen it's hard to get really good detailed close-up images of them i've looked at tours on the insides of these and i didn't see many arrow slits but what i did see are large openings for windows higher up or doors doors facing the outside of a tower no platform there to walk upon why would they have a door going to the outside well the answer is that there was a platform in the past but what type of platform would you put on a building like this these doors are access points to external battlements on the towers what type of battlements we're talking about hoardings a hoarding is a timber extension added usually to castle walls but also castle towers to give people a platform to repel attackers that's either shooting bows crossbows but also dropping large heavy things or nasty things like boiled sand and stuff it's hard to do that when you have like crenellations sitting on the wall you have to lean out and do it a hoarding gives you a platform to walk out of the line of the wall beneath and be able to drop right down onto the attackers beneath one of the key signs of hoardings are these interesting square holes on the wall itself those holes initially are there as part of the scaffolding work and so they can put timber beams in the holes put a like a platform then they can build up the stone and as the stone gets higher they make provision for a new new hole they put the timber in there and then they have a higher platform and they go up you know successively like that these types of holes are called pot lug holes but it's very likely that they had multiple names in different regions in different languages but the stereotypical name in english in the modern day that we refer to them are potluck holes and what do we see on these towers potluck holes all the way up but it's not just for scaffolding because also what you can add thanks to these potluck holes are wooden hoardings one of the diagrams that i was able to find of one of these towers from the inside is a bit blurry but what we see here is an image that shows three consecutive layers of hoardings that is incredible i said this is a tower that has multiple layers of battlements going up were they fortified oh yes they were multiple layers of battlements hoarding battlements oh my goodness but then of course some have crenellated tops but also what would have been very likely is some type of wooden battlement hoarding like battlement sometimes just an actual building right sitting on top of the towers themselves which would give a larger footprint because it's extended so when you extend a wooden structure from the line of the wall beneath that's called jettying you see it a lot in medieval cottage kind of architecture i have a whole video why do buildings overhang their castle floors yeah that's called jetting and when it's done with stonework it's called corbaling but it's very likely that they had a jettied structure on top of these castle towers to give a larger footprint larger room for them to stay within so by looking closer at these towers they are without a doubt fortified for actual conflict okay these are made to be used as defensive structures so it's clear these towers were built and used for defense but that's not the only use that you could put a fortified tower to it also meant you had a very secure place to store supplies to store valuables to store weapons also soldiers they could have functioned as a type of barracks at times as well but of course when you know conflict broke out it's the safest place and so the rich family that that built it most definitely would retreat to it as well this makes a lot of sense because when we look at other medieval castles or multiple periods we can see very close similar designs now if you think a castle needs to have a wall around it to be classed as a castle that is historically inaccurate there are many fortified structures buildings that did not have a wall around them that were used and referred to as castles in their period you could look at multiple examples one is called the tower house there's a number of these represented in scotland but a tower house is legitimately a type of castle that does not have a wall it is a fortified tower and the tower can be of differing design sometimes they don't look as stereotypical as you would think is towers they look more keep like but they are most definitely a fortified large building tower right there's also pill towers which are a type of medieval watchtower that also functions as a castle because people lived in them and there are many cases of castles that don't have walls around them and then when we look at some of the smaller scale castles not only the fortified buildings but just on their own like you know certain tower houses as well look at the designs some are as simple as being a square tower-like structure with a battlement on top look at how simple and direct that is but it's still a castle so if this fortified tower structure is a castle how can you say the ones in bologna are not just because they're in a city doesn't disqualify them especially if they're functioning that fortified defensive purpose so what we can see these fortified towers of bologna are actually very similar to many other types of castles that we see in the medieval period but what's interesting about them is they do tend to be a little bit taller and sometimes a little bit more narrow and because they're so tall they have multiple levels of battlements so as a result i think this design does deserve its kind of own classification and i almost class these as urban style medieval castle towers but the peculiarities of these designs mostly come from the urban environment in which they're built they have a more narrow footprint they were more restricted on the amount of space that they could occupy that prevented perhaps doing an outer wall though some of these towers have a wider base and have fortifications on that base as well which created an additional layer of defense but if i didn't know anything about medieval bologna and i looked at a you know dense urban setting where i needed to build a fortified castle for myself and i was restricted on the footprint this type of design is probably what you would end up naturally coming to which is what they did as well so did anybody live in these fortified towers this is one of the key distinctions of a castle because a castle is a residence the thing is though you need to understand that that classification already has exceptions in the medieval period to buildings that were legitimately referred to as castles in the medieval period castles that functioned as more military fortifications to a military order this is like the cracked chevalier or marlbork castle are still called castles okay and so even in the medieval period just fortified fortresses sometimes were referred to as castles if they were built for the purpose of defense so a defensive structure sometimes just called castle anyway but even in the case of bologna a lot of these castles did have people living in them but other times they didn't there is an interesting inconvenience that comes with defensive structures like this that we see reflected in other castles in the medieval period and it's that the primary fortified tower sometimes is a bit too inconvenient to live in especially living at the top you'd have to climb all these stairs every day and that's a pain and so what we see sometimes in castle design is that they have a fortified primary tower that can be referred to as the don john in the period the keepers are more common to him as i mentioned in modern day and they wouldn't always live in it but it would be the primary fallback point when the castle becomes under attack especially up the top because any attacker not only would they need to break through any outer walls if they were there but this next part also applies to the case of bologna by going to the top of it the attackers have to then go through each level and fighting while going up the stairs off narrow stairs is very very difficult and dangerous and adds a very significant fortified element to any defense position that you'd want to go to and so yes oftentimes these large fortified towers even on more stereotypical castles weren't lived in they were a fallback position and then they had a more habitable part of the castle that was built on ground level that they would live in and this in my opinion is where we start to see the distinction the difference between what the keepers and what the don john is don john is a term that always stuck with the tower element of a castle why because of an additional utility that you could put this tower to if you weren't going to live in the tower because it was so inconvenient to get to it became a great thing to store things in mostly the most precious things that you wanted to protect because that was the hardest place for people to get into and steal but also being so high up it was one of the most difficult places to escape from and so the large fortified towers of these castles started to be used as prisons you know what's really interesting about some of the fortified towers of bologna throughout history some were used as prisons this reality remained true in many different parts of the medieval period that a place that's really high up and hard to get to is a great place to throw someone that makes it difficult for them to escape from okay yes prisons and this is where the term don john evolved to mean dungeon in english dungeon the place where you throw prisoners don john literally evolved to mean one of the places in the castle that was most difficult for people to escape from it started with the don johns the most fortified towers and evolved to just mean any place in the castle that was really hard to escape from that includes a place buried deep in the ground the dungeon but that also gives insight as to why the term don john stuck around and referred to the tower part of the castle and the habitable living part of the castle started to be referred to as the keep even though our true proper keep should be fortified and oftentimes was tower-like we see the kind of evolution of the language signs that the fortified towers of bologna were lived in is that there are many cases that had multiple floors and also floors to the lower level but there are cases of that certain towers being so narrow that they actually didn't have intermediate floors on the center of the tower going up and it was just a spiral staircase a timber spiral staircase at square bordering the line of the internal wall all the way up to the very top and it would be very hard to live in such a type of castle if the primary you know floors or rooms is at the very top and the very bottom towel like that would primarily be used for defensive purposes not necessarily for habitable purposes but we see both we see towers that were lived in one tower in particular that's still standing this day and actually functions as a bed and breakfast it's the prendi party prindipa i add an italian accent um tower it was used as a seminary at one point and a prison as a multiple levels going up and most definitely was able to function as a residence because these towers were built by the most wealthy families it's likely that the wealthy families did have you know a separate residence maybe attached to it on you know a lower level but again many cases of them living in these towers as well so then what are the circumstances that would have caused these towers to be built because this is very like singular almost unique i haven't seen any other cases of this happening there are cases of castles being built you know within the cities sometimes attached to the city walls or within the city walls and this is literally the definition meaning of citadel a citadel is usually or sometimes i can translation means little castle but it means the you know as opposed to the city it's a it's a small in the size of the city but it's the fortified part of the city the citadel and usually we only ever see one castle being built in a city the reasons why might you know lead us to the cause for how bologna came about and it's obviously the ruler the king of the city the primary authority wanted a place of power to be able to govern control also protect the city but the governing can control part is an interesting thing because bologna of this time didn't have a singular ruler necessarily it was basically a type of free city state though it had treaties and obligations to certainly by rulers they had an interesting relationship with the pope for instance it was mostly autonomous and as a result the city needed to govern itself who would rise to govern the city then the most powerful and influential members of it it'll be very hard for a single member of this community to say i'm going to build myself a fortified residence that gives me protection and gives me more influence to be able to exert my power and authority influence from others and i'm then going to stop you from being able to build your own castles what's interesting is that many a leader ruler of medieval period did that very thing prevented the locals from building their own fortifications this arose in many instances throughout the past one in particular of the later medieval period was a thing called a license to crenellate where there was literally a license needed if you were going to add fortifications to your residence regardless of that residence was boy brother you got a license for that medieval castle fortification if it was a mana you still needed a license to add fortifications to the manor house if it was built out of stone or something larger like a keep or you know any type of defensive building or any type of building you literally needed a license to add fortifications to it even if you're a noble because the king wanted to keep check of how many castles the nobility had because that gave the nobility power not only to you know maintain authority over their own area but gave them power to oppose the king castles were a legitimate type of military armament and whoever had them gave them power to do many many things and so literally kings and rulers tried to regulate who was able to build castles the kings themselves they didn't need regulation they would build as many they had and they usually built multiple ones edward longshanks for instance built several castles in wales just to impose and maintain his power control over that region so yeah kings built multiple castles but as to nobility well if they're on their side yeah but again they tried to regulate it but in a situation where there was no real overarching authority but it was an authority maintained by a group kind of union well then uh who could prevent who from building in actual fact i suspect that the first nobility to build a fortified tower within the city most likely was the catalyst that kicked off all the other ones building them as well a sign of power and prestige and showing off i think it had an aspect to it but really the first one it was built fortified all these towers are built fortified so that was the primary thing they could have built any other thing to kind of show off and say look how well they are wealthy i am no no no gaining maintain an influence over this city became a very heated conflicted thing that actually spilled into conflict and so there must have already been tension before these towers were built and then when one of these you know nobles rich merchants in the city built a fortified tower just think about that that would have kicked off an arms race it's not only really imposing but it's threatening if one person has one of these fortified towers that would give them huge influence and ability to potentially even lead a coup because they are if they're the only ones with a fortified residence to strike out from and then retreat to for defence oh my goodness so if anyone else nearby had the means and was rich enough to be able to build their own fortified residence or fallback tower yes they most likely did it and then when two did it it's almost like a mexican standoff where they see oh someone just got a really really big stick how can i protect against it i need a big stick of my own and so we see these towers multiple being built all throughout the city it's remarkable and this really is the environment the situation that caused it and it makes sense when we kind of break it down in fact during the 1200s so the 13th century and this kind of it was the late 12th century and 13th century bologna suffered from great political instability when most of the prominent families of the city incessantly fought for control and influence and power in the town and so the idea that these towers were just like vanity projects to show off wealth there's recorded instances of serious conflict of people trying to as i mentioned gain influence and leadership of the city that's why these towers were built they're fortified towers they're not fancy towers they're not you know um belfries or types of uh cathedral-like towers many common by the way there were belfries like this depiction of the city of bologna which i was able to reconstruct and it was difficult to find actually has some towers that i would more identify as bell towers and we can tell by the types of windows and exteriors on the towers but most of the other ones these are fortified ones what's also interesting is the level of infighting that happened in the city was one of the catalysts that weakened it enough for the pope to impose rulership over it okay they're the very fact that they're able to have all this infighting was the fact that they were more autonomous but that was the very thing that led to the autonomy of the city being subverted by the pope he instituted a ruler in the city it was uh i think it's cardinal bertrand de pocay i'm i'm horrible with french pronunciation but that happened in 1327. of course the inhabitants of bologna who seem to be a rather um rebellious independent strong-headed bunch i didn't like that and they did rebel against him as well and he was eventually ousted and bologna became a signori and uh tadio pepoli in 1334. of course a lot of this came crashing down uh when the black death hit the city in 1348 and the estimated population of bologna went from 40 000 uh 40 to 50 000 inhabitants to 20 to 25 000 inhabitants yeah the black death would have been devastating in bologna but the uh the golden age of this castle period of bologna was the late 12th century and the 13th century kind of culminating and ending with the black death the towers were still around but uh as soon as you gain more centralized authority over the town where the nobility the uh rich families within it couldn't really gain influence and leadership of the city and there's no real point for actual infighting if they did fight the great authority to come and stamp them down the utility and purpose behind these fortified towers lessened as well and they started to get dismantled bit by bit to the point where we only have a few still standing to this day there was also that instability issue because of the architectural technology at the time something else when analyzing this that caused them to try and get higher because some of the height of these towers are just immense is the fact that they're so close to other towers that very likely could be an enemy depending on what alliances or negotiations happened at the time and so if you have these towers so close to one another the tower that is taller is going to have a significant advantage over the tower that is shorter because you can shoot down onto anyone standing on the top of the tower even battlements you know around and it's much difficult much more difficult to shoot up than it is to shoot down where you're aided by gravity so i don't think it was just a vanity project to try and have i say i've got the biggest tower i think it was also a defensive element as well because having the biggest tower gave you the greatest advantage in conflict and in some of these conflicts in bologna can you imagine how amazing it would be if too close by towers get into conflict and we like there's recorded instances of conflict breaking out of people vying for control of the city but i haven't been able to find specific accounts of this family or this town versus this tower anything like that but it's likely that this happened at one point or another and can you imagine a type of battle between these two towers that are close to close enough to shoot each other it would be incredible one of the most unique medieval psych environments i've ever seen so unique that is almost parallels certain fantasy depictions it almost looks like a fantasy city it is amazing literally the medieval city of castles utterly incredible thank you very much for joining me in this big deep dive showcase of what i feel really is one of the most incredible things i've ever seen about the medivh period but of course you probably tell why i'm so interested like a city of castles how how on earth have i never heard of that before the answer is i think people have not really identified as castles when i was looking at a lot of them people were referring to them as towers that the nobility built uh as signs of wealth to show off that was sometimes used in conflict but no no as we've hopefully been out established in this video and from the additional study that i've done these were built first primarily as fortified structures for conflict okay warfare internal warfare in the inside the city because like i said they wanted to build something fancy there was so many other things that they could have built now these are first and foremost castles and it's incredible uh have you heard of medieval bologna before what do you think let me know in the comments below i'll very much look forward to reading them and i hope to see you here on the next video on chat adversity so until that time farewell [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 136,811

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Id: v6llOleP6g4

Length: 41min 39sec (2499 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2022