Bologna

Welcome to Bologna

Fusing haughty elegance with down-to-earth grit and one beautifully colonnaded medieval grid, Bologna is a city of two intriguing halves. One side is a hard-working, high-tech city located in the super-rich Po valley where suave opera-goers waltz out of regal theatres and into some of the nation’s finest restaurants. The other is a bolshie, politically edgy city that hosts the world’s oldest university and is famous for its graffiti-embellished piazzas filled with mildly inebriated students swapping Gothic fashion tips.

No small wonder Bologna has earned so many historical monikers. La Grassa (the fat one) celebrates a rich food legacy (ragù or bolognese sauce was first concocted here). La Dotta (the learned one) doffs a cap to the city university founded in 1088. La Rossa (the red one) alludes to the ubiquity of the terracotta medieval buildings adorned with miles of porticoes, as well as the city’s long-standing penchant for left-wing politics.

Often neglected on travel itineraries in favour of Italy’s more famous hotspots, Bologna nevertheless has plenty to offer tourists, from food to art to hidden secrets.

Bologna is known as ‘la dotta, la rossa e la grassa’ – that’s ‘the educated’ in a nod to its university, Europe’s oldest; ‘the red’, in reference to the terracotta hues of its buildings and the city’s historic communist leanings; and most importantly, ‘the fat’, in reference to the delicious food.

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