The properties of Langmuir layers made up of three bola-ampbiphiles having the general structure UA-Cn-UA, where UA denotes urocanic acid and Cnis an alkyl chain of varying length (n = 8, 12 and 16) and of a monopolar amphiphile (UAC12) were investigated. The area per molecule at the air-water interface was measured. Moreover, a modeling study was performed to visualize the conformation of these compounds at the air / water interface. The pressure-area isotherm and the molecular modeling study indicate that a folded conformation is possible only for the UAC16UA bola-amphiphile. This result could be connected to the ability of UAC16UA to form micelles.