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Five sections, sixteen entries, no dropdowns. The register orders the same material by number instead.
Towers
Height as a family argument.
- 01San GimignanoFourteen towers survive of the seventy-odd that once stood; they are a family arms race in stone, and the commune eventually legislated a maximum height to stop it.
- 02Torre GrossaThe tallest survivor, built by the commune itself, which is the point — the public tower had to out-top the private ones.
- 03Bologna and its leaning pairTwo towers from perhaps two hundred, and what happened to the rest.
- 04Why a tower at allRefuge, storage and display at once — and a poor military structure by any measure.
The Norman South
Three cultures in one chapel.
- 05The Cappella PalatinaA Norman king's chapel in Palermo with a painted Islamic muqarnas ceiling over a Byzantine mosaic apse — three traditions in one room, made by workshops that must have shared a site.
- 06MonrealeMosaic on a scale that required Byzantine craftsmen and Norman money in the same decade.
- 07Castel del MonteFrederick II's octagon of octagons in Puglia — no kitchens, no stables, no convincing explanation, and centuries of argument about what it was for.
Plaster
How a fresco was actually made.
- 08Buon frescoPigment in water on wet lime plaster, which sets chemically — so the painter has one day's work and no revisions.
- 09The giornataThe day's patch of plaster, whose join lines are visible in raking light and let you reconstruct the order of work.
- 10SinopiaThe red underdrawing on the rough coat, often only seen when a fresco is detached.
Papers
The archives that survived.
- 11The Datini archiveFrancesco di Marco Datini of Prato left roughly 150,000 letters and 500 ledgers, walled up in his house and rediscovered — the most complete surviving picture of how a medieval merchant actually worked.
- 12Double entryBookkeeping that balances is an instrument of trust, and it spread from Italian practice into everything.
- 13The bill of exchangeMoving money without moving coin, which is what made long-distance trade survivable.
Schools
Where the teaching happened.
- 14BolognaA university organised by the students, who hired and fined their own professors — a structure that shaped what a degree meant.
- 15The studiumWhat a medieval faculty actually taught, and in what order.
- 16Books before printThe pecia system let a stationer rent out one exemplar in pieces so several scribes could copy at once.