Bologna: Europe’s Oldest College Town
I’ve always enjoyed visiting college towns – from Ann Arbor to Madison, to Cambridge, both Massachusetts and the UK. In 2021 we visited Coimbra, the home of Europe’s second oldest university, so this time, we decided to go to the oldest European college town – Bologna.
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While we didn’t see a lot of Americans in Bologna, it is a popular spot for European city breaks so there were plenty of people visiting from the UK and the rest of Europe. It’s pretty easy to reach by train and bus and has plenty of low-cost flights as well.
Arriving in Bologna
We took FlixBus to Bologna. From Siena, we often find it much easier to take a bus vs the train, Siena’s train station is off the main line and makes it difficult for longer journeys. Plus, when you have luggage, it is much easier to store it under the bus than to have to drag it between platforms when you change trains. FlixBus makes it easy to book with their app and we can usually pay a little extra for reserved seats. We like to be up front for the best view. In about three hours we were in Bologna.
We arrived on a Sunday afternoon and it was about a twenty minute walk to our hotel. The weather was warm so we rolled our bags and went on our way. Once we got to Via dell’Indipendenza, the main street that runs through the heart of the city, we found ourselves in one of the largest crowds we had been in for some time. A good part of the street is closed to cars on the weekends, and it felt like everyone was out, locals and tourists alike. There were people of every age, young families, college students, middle age and older. At first we thought it was some kind of festival, but it was just a regular Sunday afternoon in this vibrant town. Our hostess at our bed and breakfast said people were happy to be out in the unusually warm weather in October.
Porticoes of Bologna
One thing that made walking in Bologna really pleasant from the start were the Porticoes. From the 12th century on, many of the buildings in Bologna were built with porticoes in front, with plenty of room to walk under them and stay protected from traffic and the elements. Some of the porticoes are plain, like the ones you see adjacent to this McDonald’s in the photo above, others have elaborate designs, frescoes and other decorations. I am surprised we didn’t take more photos but maybe we kind of forgot to take photos above our heads instead of what was in front of us. The porticoes of Bologna are part of their urban identity and are listed as an Unesco World Heritage site.
We navigated through the crowds and found our bed and breakfast, just across from Bologna’s famous two towers – Torre degli Asinelli and Torre Garisenda. These date back to the 12th and 14th centuries and sit in the medieval heart of the city. The Torre Garisenda has a distinctive lean, much more dramatic than the Tower of Pisa. You can visit both towers but we weren’t in the mood to climb 498 steps up.
La Grassa (the Fat One)
One of Bologna’s nicknames is La Grassa, the fat one, since it is so well known for its food. Our first evening we headed for the Quadrilatero, the famous food market district and had our first lasagne Bolognese, eating outside and enjoying the still warm October evening. We would continue to eat very well during our stay.
The next day we took a food tour of Bologna with Taste Bologna, a local tour group. Our guide, Mattia, picked us up in the famous Piazza Maggiore and we explored the city with three other couples. We’ve done both private and larger group tours before, and we feel like a small group is best. It’s always interesting to taste new foods with others, especially people from other countries, since we always wind up comparing it to what we are familiar with from home.
Mattia started us with a coffee and snack, then we headed to a local pasta maker who was making the famous tortellini that we got to try fresh off the board. We also visited a local market, the Mercato delle Erbe, with fresh vegetables, fish and meats, including horse. We didn’t try that.
The highlight of our tour for me was our visit to the Osteria Del Sole. This is one of several bars in Bologna where you bring your own food and sit at long communal tables to enjoy it with friends. This Osteria has been operating since 1465. Mattia bought a selection of regional meats, cheeses and balsamic vinegar for us to enjoy with some local wines. After growing up on Oscar Mayer Bologna, we were amazed at the tasty local meats. I would never have tried mortadella on my own.
The balsamic vinegar was also quite a surprise. We buy it in bulk from Costco, but in Bologna, it’s aged and packaged into tiny bottles and you dribble a tiny amount onto your cheese or bread. It was a totally different experience.
The best part of our tour wasn’t the food though. Mattia weaved in the history of Bologna and the buildings we saw, and shared how his family’s recipes compared to what we were eating. He also gave us some really good restaurant recommendations for the rest of our trip.
Exploring Bologna
For the rest of our time in Bologna, we wandered around the town and took in some of the sights. The city core is fairly compact and everything starts at the historic core of the town, the Piazza Maggiore. There’s a large modern tourist office at one end of the Piazza, with plenty of information and English-speaking experts who can answer all your questions. We mainly stuck to the tourist map we got from our hotel and spent a lot of time walking, occasionally stopping to peek into a church or get a bite to eat.
The Basilica di San Petronio takes up a large part of the piazza. It’s a church that was started in the 14th century and the outside doesn’t look like much, but we were intrigued since there were Italian soldiers guarding it outside. We asked and were told that the soldiers are usually there because there is a painting inside that includes an image of Mohammed. There were plenty of people visiting so we decided to go inside and check it out.
The church is much prettier inside than out. It’s dedicated to St Petronius, the patron saint of Bologna. There are beautiful frescoes all throughout, but the oldest and most famous ones are behind a gate and you have to pay a small admission fee to get in.
It was later in the afternoon and I think we were some of the last people to pay our admission and walk through. While we were admiring the frescoes, we met a guy visiting by himself, and when he heard us speaking English he started talking to us. Pretty soon we were chatting about all kinds of things and we got a bit loud. Timo is a composer who was visiting from Finland to learn more about Italian organs and he told us all about his work.
We were having a great conversation until the poor guy who took our tickets came over and asked us to quiet down. We realized then that the exhibit was closed and he was waiting for us to finish seeing everything so he could lock up and leave.
We almost left without noticing Mohammed but we asked before we left and the very patient guide walked us over and pointed him out, in the 14th century fresco, “Inferno” by Giovanni de Modena. This has been controversial for centuries and has been covered and uncovered many times, so we felt fortunate to be able to see it.
Biblioteca Salaborsa
Next to Piazza Maggiore is the Piazza Nettuno, with its iconic grand sculpture of Neptune. Just across from the sculpture we saw a bunch of people going into a building so we followed them into the Biblioteca Salaborsa, the public library.
The library turned out to be one of our favorite sights in Bologna. It’s in a historic old market hall, with beautiful windows and floors, and all of its floors were bustling with visitors of all ages. We got to the cafe just in time for afternoon aperitivo and settled down near the main hall with our Aperol Spritzes and snacks while workers were busy lining up folding chairs for an event.
It turned out there was a book reading with an Italian author, Laura Messina, who was visiting from her home in Japan. I hadn’t heard of her before but between the slides and my basic Italian language skills I was able to figure out that they were talking about her book, The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World. I couldn’t really follow the discussion but I wound up reading her book later and loved it. It made for a memorable evening.
In the cafe Mark struck up a conversation with a woman speaking English and she told us that we had to go downstairs and see the ruins. We finished up our drinks and headed down and found that right under the room where the book reading was happening, there were excavations, with different layers of the settlements that have been there for thousands of years. From the first settlements dating to the 7th century, to the Etruscan ruins, finally to the Bononia of the Roman empire founded in 189 BC. It was fascinating to look at all the well preserved ruins and see up through the transparent floor to the people on folding chairs watching the book reading.
La Dotta (the learned one)
On our last full day in Bologna, we spent the morning exploring the campus of the university, the oldest in the Western world, founded in 1088. The university inspires one of Bologna’s other nicknames, La Dotta or the learned one. Dante, Erasmus, Copernicus, and Verdi are among the university’s alumni, as well as many current European scientists, businessmen and politicians.
We explored the various museums on the campus, seeing an amazing collection of scientific and astronomical instruments, fossils and natural specimens, and other artifacts. The most fascinating for me, although a little creepy, was the museum of the school of medicine. The museum has hundreds of anatomical models that were cast in wax, some of which date back to the 16th century. They are very detailed and realistic, perhaps a little too accurate to look at before lunch.
After the museum, we made an important pilgrimage to take a photo of Mark with Pallone Street. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a Pallone street in Italy; it’s a pretty common word that means ball, generally a soccer ball. But we had spotted it near the bus station and had to go back to see it properly.
It turned out to be a little harder to find than we thought, but we persevered and got our photo, before stopping for lunch at a small sandwich shop on the street. We were definitely off the tourist path by now and savored a quick bite with lots of locals going about their day.
Our final stop on our tour of Bologna was the modern art museum – MAMbo – or Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna. I love modern art and seeing different displays around the world. The MAMbo is home to hundreds of paintings from Giorgio Morandi, one of Italy’s most famous painters of the 20th century, and we saw dozens of still lifes, some repeated over and over, in his somewhat muted color palette.
Summary
We really enjoyed our three nights in Bologna, especially the food, and enjoyed wandering around, discovering new places, and mingling with mostly European tourists. We’d definitely recommend it as a city break, and if we come back, we’ll be sure to make some treks to the countryside nearby to explore even more gastronomic specialities.
See our TripAdvisor trip to find links to where we stayed and ate in Bologna.
Read about our next stop in Italy: Alba, in the Piemonte region.