Via degli Orefici

The tall arcades of Palazzo Ronzani are occupied by shops and cafes, and behind the facade stretches a large income-producing building. It was built for several different uses: shops, a hotel, apartments, and an auditorium. A theater with almost two thousand seats was installed beneath the building; the Modernissimo cinema later opened here. Screenings are now held again in the underground auditorium.

“Orefici” means gold- and silversmiths. As early as a notarial deed of fourteen oh four, the street was called “orevesaria,” meaning a place of jewelry workshops. Such proximity benefited both the craftsmen and their customers: precious metal required trust, and the guild certified the authenticity of the work. By twelve ninety-nine, Bologna's jewelers had separated from the general guild of blacksmiths and drawn up their own statutes, and in thirteen thirty-seven they were admitted to the management of the city's mint. They made money from jewelry, silverware, and coin minting. Several jewelry shops still remain here.

The medieval street was much narrower and curved between the workshops. Its present width was given to it by people who decided to clear the center for traffic. Under the plan of eighteen eighty-nine, the city council intended to lay out a straight thoroughfare from the square to the Two Towers—the future Via Rizzoli. In December nineteen ten, the council approved the widening, and the following spring it began expropriating houses.

Palazzo Lambertini then stood at the corner of Orefici. Inside were shops, a hotel, and the Ronzani family's beer hall. Alessandro Ronzani ran the family brewing business: his father Camillo had established production as early as the middle of the nineteenth century, and this establishment served as the central warehouse and point of sale. The coming destruction of the quarter would deprive the company of its most prominent city address. In the spring of nineteen eleven, Ronzani announced the relocation of the beer hall, and in the summer workers dismantled the palazzo, the neighboring Via Spaderie, and the final stretch of the old Orefici. Six stone columns from the palazzo were preserved; they were moved to a university building on Via Selmi.

Ronzani then acquired the first cleared plot. He commissioned a large income-producing building on the site of the demolished quarter, capable of housing shops, a cafe, a hotel, apartments, and an auditorium at the same time. By nineteen fifteen, the present Palazzo Ronzani had risen. A theater for almost two thousand people was built underground; because of the war, it opened only in nineteen twenty-one as Modernissimo and later became a cinema.

Now commercial and restaurant establishments again operate beneath the palazzo's large arches, while the restored Modernissimo welcomes audiences in its underground auditorium. The wide part of the street lies on the site of the houses, workshops, and beer hall that disappeared during the clearance. The name remained with the surviving stretch, where jewelry displays still stand among the evening cafes.