Bologna travel guide

Top 10 sights in Bologna

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   San Petronio Basilica

   Begun in 1390 and intended to be larger than St Peter's in Rome, which the papacy prevented — so the brick flank is unfinished and the front is faced only halfway up. Cassini's meridian line of 1655 runs sixty-seven metres across the floor and was used to measure the solar year.

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2. 

   2© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fountain of Neptune, Bologna

   A fountain of 1566 with a bronze Neptune by Giambologna, who worked in Bologna before Florence. The nudity of the sea nymphs was objected to at the time, and the figure's raised arm is used by Bolognese as a landmark and a joke.

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3. 

   3© Gaspa · CC BY 2.0

   Piazza Maggiore

   The main square since the thirteenth century, closed by the basilica, the town hall and the podestà's palace, and paved with sandstone slabs. Films are shown on it free on summer nights and the whole city sits on the ground for them.

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4. 

   4© Capry26 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca

   A sanctuary on the hill above the city, reached by a portico of six hundred and sixty-six arches running nearly four kilometres uphill — the longest arcade in the world, built by public subscription from 1674 so that the Madonna could be carried down to the city in the dry.

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5. 

   5© Paul Hermans · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Palazzo Re Enzo

   A civic palace of about 1245 named after Enzio of Sardinia, Frederick II's son, who was captured by the Bolognese in 1249 and held in it in comfortable confinement for twenty-three years until he died.

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6. 

   6© Maretta Angelini · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica of San Domenico

   Church in Bologna begun in 1221, holding the tomb of St Dominic. Its marble ark carries figures by Nicola Pisano and three by Michelangelo, carved when he was twenty.

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7. 

   7© Liridon · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Bologna Cathedral

   The cathedral of Bologna, dedicated to St Peter, largely rebuilt in the seventeenth century after fires and earthquakes. Its bell tower contains the oldest bell in the city, and the nave is the widest in Italy after St Peter's.

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8. 

   8© sailko · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

   The national gallery, in a former Jesuit novitiate beside the academy, covering Emilian painting from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century — the Carracci, Guido Reni, Guercino — with Raphael's Ecstasy of St Cecilia as the single most important picture.

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   9© Velvet · CC BY-SA 4.0

   palazzo del Podestà

   A civic building of about 1200 rebuilt in the Renaissance, under whose crossing vault a person speaking quietly into one corner can be heard clearly in the diagonally opposite one. Bolognese have used it to test the acoustic for four centuries.

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    10

    Palazzo d'Accursio

    The city hall on the main square, grown from several medieval buildings, holding the municipal art collections and a museum of Giorgio Morandi — who painted the same bottles and jars in one Bologna room for forty years.

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1. 

   1© Patrick Clenet · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Two Towers

   The twelfth-century towers that are the emblem of Bologna, both of them leaning. They stand where the roads from the five gates of the old wall converge; the taller is the Asinelli and the shorter, which leans further, the Garisenda.

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   2© Paolobon140 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Santo Stefano Church

   A complex of linked churches, four of the seven that once stood here, including a twelfth-century copy of the Holy Sepulchre with the tomb of Bologna's patron in the middle of it. The oldest fabric is fifth century and the whole group is entered off one courtyard.

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   3© Wwikiwalter · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio

   Built in 1563 to bring the scattered university schools under one roof, and covered inside with seven thousand painted coats of arms of students who studied here. Its anatomical theatre of 1637 is carved in spruce, with two skinned figures holding up the canopy over the lectern.

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   4© Godslave · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Piazza Santo Stefano

   A triangular arcaded square in front of the church of the seven churches, one of the few open spaces in Bologna that feels domestic. An antiques market fills it on the second weekend of each month.

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   Palazzo Poggi

   A palace at 33 Via Zamboni in Bologna. It houses the administration of the University of Bologna and the rector's office.

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   6© Nicola Quirico · CC BY-SA 4.0

   orto botanico dell'Università di Bologna

   The botanical garden of the University of Bologna, laid out in 1568. After Pisa, Padua and Florence it is among the oldest in Europe.

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   7© Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Vita

   A late baroque church near Piazza Maggiore in Bologna. It holds Niccolò dell'Arca's terracotta group of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ of the 1460s, whose violent expressions are among the most cited works in Italian sculpture.

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   8© Roberta Mattioli · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica of Saint Francis

   A historic church in Bologna in Italy. Founded in the thirteenth century, it has been held by the Conventual Franciscans ever since, and the Holy See raised it to a minor basilica.

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   Palazzo dei Banchi

   A screen facade of 1568 by Vignola, put across the east side of the main square to hide a jumble of shop fronts behind a single Renaissance elevation. Two arches through it lead into the market lanes, which are still the food quarter.

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    10© Paul Hermans · CC BY-SA 3.0

    San Giacomo Maggiore

    An Augustinian church begun in 1267, whose Bentivoglio chapel was decorated by the family that ruled Bologna in the fifteenth century — Lorenzo Costa's frescoes and Francia's altarpiece, made when they were at the height of their power and about to lose it.

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