Our four days in Bologna – a low-profile Italian city that is high on charm!

After two amazing weeks in the Italian countryside, it was time to scratch our city itch again and head to Bologna! We were excited about this city, which is less visited than Rome, Venice, Pisa, Florence, etc. Not only were we going to explore its awesomeness, but we were going to be meeting up with a very special someone as well!

To give you a little bit of background, Bologna is a city of ~ 55 square miles and 400,000 people (in the metro area) and is located an hour and a half north of Florence. There is a centro (and historic) area that is inside of a circular road and the city continues its sprawl outside of that ring.

Bologna is known as La Grassa, La Rossa and La Dotta, which means, The Fat (for the delicious food), The Red (for the color of its buildings) and The Learned (for its university, which is the world’s oldest). We were able to experience all three sides of the city while we were there!

La Grassa – The Fat

Now, I am not going to proclaim that we are foodies, in any sense of the word. We like good food, we appreciate good food, but very rarely do our day or travel plans revolve around food. I’d say Damian is more into food than I am, as 90% of the time I’m happy to eat whatever for sustenance.

But, Bologna was a bit different. In a city renowned for its food (and in a region, Emilia-Romagna, also renowned for its food, more to come on that in a later post), we couldn’t be so laissez fair about eating. And luckily, we had a very special friend to help us out!

Let me introduce you to Chiara Pace. Chiara and I met doing flying trapeze, maybe eight years ago. We were both in a random class together and our silly senses of humor just hit it off, and we’ve been great friends who have been laughing together since. Chiara lives in New York, but is from Bologna and just happened to be in town when we were. I mean, how awesome is that?

So, the first night we got into town we met up with Chiara for an amazing dinner at Trattoria da Pietro. It was so wonderful to catch up and to, again, have a little piece of home with us on our trip. We didn’t want our time together to end so we walked to get gelato as well. It was sad to say goodbye but I can’t wait to spend more time together when we are back in New York. What a special person.

We ate well for other meals (both at home and out) during our time in Bologna but none was as good or as memorable as this one with Chiara. Also, Chiara taught us another awesome fact about Bologna: the porticos, or covered arches that you see in the picture two up? Those are specific to and famous about Bologna. There are 42 kilometers of them around the city and they protect people in the city from rain and sun, on top of being beautiful!

La Rossa – The Red

Actually, Chiara taught us another cool thing about this city (and I’m sure other stuff too that I am forgetting), and that is that there are rumors that the city is called La Rossa for its political leanings, but it really is because of the red colors of the architecture. And boy is it true!

We spent one day just walking and exploring the whole city, and discovered that Bologna actually is quite a small city (I love small cities, hello Boston). The center is a big plaza called Piazza Maggiore, which is where a lot of communal hanging out goes on. While we were in town there was a festival happening and they were showing movies on a huge screen every night (much like they do in Bryant Park). Also, there is a famous Neptune statue/fountain there but it was under construction, and you know, it’s just not as fun without water shooting out of the mermaids’ nips.

There’s also a cute area called the “quadrilateral,” which is basically the area enclosed by four streets making a quadrangle, and it is filled with food vendors, markets and clothing stores. And, even though we’re not going to Venice, we found a little canal fun in Bologna itself! I thought this was the cutest little lookout point.

But, you really get an idea of how red Bologna is when you see it from high above. The city has its own version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, in the form of two towers, called Due Torri. These towers were constructed in the 1100s and you are only allowed to climb the Asinelli tower, because the Garisenda tower leans too much. I mean, it’s nuts, look at that lean!

You can buy tickets to go up the Asinelli tower and of course we did that (they only let a couple dozen people up at a time, for safety)! It is 498 steps to the top, and though it’s a windy, wooden staircase, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. There are a couple platforms on the way up both for people to stop and rest, and also so if you look down you aren’t looking at the entire 100 meters (300 feet!) drop.

When you got to the top, the views were breathtaking. It was a perfect sunny day, with a cooling breeze, and we could have stayed up there for hours. This was our favorite activity in Bologna and we’d definitely recommend it to anyone who is heading there for a trip!

La Dotta – The Learned

And then finally, La Dotta. The University of Bologna was founded in 1088 and many consider it to be the oldest university in the world (at least, that is still operating). The city’s culture is very defined by its students, and we spent a bunch of time in the area around Via Zamboni watching World Cup games, which is near the university.

But, the coolest part was exploring some of the really old parts of the university. We went to a building called the Biblioteca Communale dell’Archiginnasio, which was built in the 1500s and was used as part of the university until the 1800s. There was a big library there but no pictures allowed, even though I snuck this cute one of the old school card catalog. It makes my heart happy.

On the walls there were tons of frescoes and then crests from the students and professors at the university. Each of them was so intricate, it’s crazy how much work went into this building! But, my favorite part of it all was seeing the anatomical theater. This room was used in the 1600s to teach students anatomy. The professor would be teaching from the lectern up front and there would be someone dissecting a cadaver on the marble table, while the students watched and learned from the benches. How neat right?

Bologna was awesome – but there’s still so much to do for next time!

While Bologna isn’t on the traditional tourist track, there is so much fun there and we barely scratched the surface. There are still so many places to eat, so many beautiful things to see and so much for us to experience. While we have some time allocated to explore more of the Emilia-Romagna region, I’m so glad we spent a few days specifically in Bologna on this trip and hope we will back again some day!

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Read more about our time in Italy using the links below:

• Italy Country Recap – What we loved (and didn’t love) in our six weeks there
• Italy – The plan for our six weeks here
• Italy – Visiting Pisa – the Leaning Tower and the Luminara festival
• Italy – Our day in Lucca
• Italy – Life on an agriturismo in Italy Part 1: Montecarlo (Tuscany)
• Italy – Four days in Bologna (you are here!)
• Italy – Life on an agriturismo in Italy Part 2: a vineyard in the Chianti region (Tuscany)
• Italy – Wineries and wine tasting in Chianti
• Italy – One day in Siena!
• Italy – Life on an agriturismo in Italy Part 3: Emilia Romagna
• Italy – Parmigiano Reggiano cheese factory and Balsamic Vinegar producer tours
• Italy – Hiking Cinque Terre
• Italy – Our three days in Florence
• Italy – Brunello wine tasting and visiting thermal baths
• Italy – Our three days in Rome