Two Towers, Bologna

The Two Towers (Due torri), both leaning, are symbols of Bologna, Italy, and the most prominent of the Towers of Bologna. They are located at the intersection of the roads that lead to the five gates of the old ring wall (mura dei torresotti). The taller one is the Asinelli; the smaller, with a greater lean, is the Garisenda. They are named for the families which are traditionally credited with having constructed them between 1109 and 1119. Their construction may have been a competition between the two families to show which was the more powerful, but the scarcity of documents from this period makes this uncertain. The name of the Asinelli family, for example, is documented for the first time in 1185, almost 70 years after the presumed construction of the tower. The Two Towers were the subject of a poem in Giosuè Carducci's Barbarian Odes. Charles Dickens wrote about them in his Pictures from Italy. Antal Szerb wrote about them in The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy.

Building data from Wikidata (CC0); heights normalised. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).