The Gendered Geography of Violence in Bologna, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries

Crime historians have only recently started to engage with the notions of space and time through qualitative and quantitative research. Influenced by criminologists and helped by the development of digital resources, historians are now increasingly able to map offenders’ use of the urban space. ¹ However, in terms of understanding and interpreting how these spaces were used, there is still much progress to be made. This chapter intends to contribute to this by examining the gendered use of Bolognese urban spaces by violent offenders over a long-term period. Going further than the traditional, binary model of the private and public spheres, we argue that the combined factors of place, time ² and social function are pivotal for our understanding of men’s and women’s patterns of crime. Through a quantitative and qualitative examination of violent transgressions in the time and spaces in which they occurred, we want to show the intricacies between private and public sphere and re-evaluate women’s use of the urban space.