Regulating the Material Culture of Bologna la grassa

Known as “fat city” (la città grassa), Bologna during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance pursued food policies that were fashioned not only to maintain its recently acquired reputation at its height, but above all to guarantee a sufficient food supply to the numerous inhabitants and resident foreigners, from occasional visitors to the many students who flowed into Bologna from various Italian and European cities because of the catalytic presence of the University. Faced with a surrounding territory that was not sufficiently productive, the public authorities sought by various measures to assure an abundant food supply and, from production to resale and even to consumption — for example, with the sumptuary laws — to regulate it in both its public and private aspects. Next to the perspective of “food for everyone” we find that of food as a marker of social identity. The manner of regulations evolved not only in parallel with changes in governmental regimes, but also by virtue of the invention of printing, which permitted changing the ways in which the legislation was disseminated, rendering it, as an added value, into a system of political propaganda.