Alfonso Rubbiani

Most tourists, and even most Bolognesi, aren't aware that a surprising proportion of Bologna's medieval good looks are down to Alfonso Rubbiani (1848-1913), who like Viollet-le-Duc often restored buildings to what they should have looked like all along, but not always with historical accuracy, much to the dismay of modern, puritanical theories of restoration. But as Andrew M. Shanken wrote in his Preservation and Creation: Alfonso Rubbiani and Bologna (Future Anterior, 2010):

For him, the architectural heritage of his city was part of a usable past, a palette of ideas that one could assemble freely as part of the revival of a city that had emerged only recently from centuries of papal rule. Rubbiani played fast and loose with fragments of buildings, using literary sources to conjure up images of a historic center under assault by nineteenth-century urbanization. He envisioned creative restorations of key buildings in the city that would allow the spirit of medieval Bologna to re-emerge from centuries of what he considered unsympathetic renovations, hostile architectural movements, and neglect. If we are now inclined to see Rubbiani’s approach as part of the European simulacrum that resulted from the “preservation” methods and theories of Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, and countless others, it is because we have not developed the historical sympathy to approach the work dispassionately.