The Casa Isolani at Strada Maggiore 19 has one of the few surviving thirteenth-century wooden porticoes in Bologna. Most of the city's medieval porticoes were originally wooden; over the centuries they were rebuilt in brick and stone for fire safety. The original timber here, nine metres tall, gives a sense of what the city looked like in 1250.
Look up. Three arrows are stuck high in the wooden beams. Generations of local guides have made a small industry out of explaining them. Whatever the truth, they are a small, free oddity on one of the most-walked streets in the centre.