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Bologna

Fusing haughty elegance with down-to-earth grit in 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.

Attractions

Must-see attractions

Casa di Lucio Dalla
Bologna
The 15th-century Palazzo Casa Fontana poi Gamberini – the fascinating, pricier-than-the-Colosseum home of eccentric Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla …
Basilica di Santo Stefano
Bologna
Bologna's most unique religious site is this atmospheric labyrinth of interlocking ecclesiastical structures, whose architecture spans centuries of…
Basilica di San Petronio
Bologna
Bologna's hulking Gothic basilica is Europe's sixth-largest church, measuring 132m by 66m by 47m. Work began on it in 1390, but it was never finished, and…
Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna
Bologna
This mouthful of a museum inside Palazzo Sanguinetti – the former home of Napoleon's Italian minister – chronicles six centuries of European musical…
San Colombano – Collezione Tagliavini
Bologna
An absolutely stunningly restored church with original frescoes and a medieval crypt rediscovered in 2005, the San Colombano hosts a wonderful collection…
FICO Eataly World
Bologna
FICO, the world's largest agri-food park, opened in 2017 to equal parts cheering and sneering in a formerly dilapidated wholesale farmers' market 7km…
Torre degli Asinelli
Bologna
Bologna's two leaning towers are the city's main symbol. The taller of the two, the 97.2m-high Torre degli Asinelli (the tallest leaning medieval tower in…
Quadrilatero
Bologna
To the east of Piazza Maggiore, the grid of streets around Via Clavature (Street of Locksmiths) sits on what was once Roman Bologna. Known as the…