Finestrella - Canale di Reno
Bricked-up medieval canal window revealing a hidden waterway once lined with water-powered mills.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Finestrella on Via Piella in Bologna starts with a merchant named Bolognino di Borghesano kneeling before a lord in 1341 to ask for a trickle of canal water, a small request that grew into one of medieval Europe's best-kept industrial secrets. It follows the Canale delle Moline, the hidden offshoot of the Reno running beneath this window, and the silk-throwing mills it powered for six hundred years, tended by just two or three workers apiece and employing close to a third of Bologna's population by the late 1600s. The guide traces how other cities tried and failed to copy the design from rumor alone. Look straight down through the little window and picture the buried water below.
This audio guide was created using AI.