  We present a general scheme for measuring the bulk properties of
non-interacting tight-binding models realized in arrays of coupled photonic
cavities. Specifically, we propose to implement a single unit cell of the
targeted model with tunable twisted boundary conditions in order to simulate
large systems and, most importantly, to access bulk topological properties
experimentally. We illustrate our method by demonstrating how to measure
topological invariants in a two-dimensional quantum Hall-like model.
