When we disembarked at the Bologna train station we feared we had made a mistake. Gritty. Grimy. Grungy.
And that was our first lesson. Bologna does not go out of its way to impress you. But impress you it will. And it did. Bologna is very comfortable being underrated, and very comfortable in its rose-colored skin, the city’s predominant hue.
So comfortable is it that it has adopted several nicknames bestowed on it, some of them cynical. La Rossa is the best known, for “The Red,” which originally referred to its blushing pink buildings, but later referred to its left-leaning politics. So what, say Bologna residents. We are who we are.
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Then there is La Dotta, “The Learned,” for the University of Bologna, which was founded in 1088 and is the oldest continuously operating university in Europe, and maybe the world. The city and university have a long history of intellectualism, from which they do not shrink.
And then there is La Turrita, “The Towered,” because Bologna has some of the best surviving examples of medieval towers, which were a craze in pre-Renaissance Italy. The leaning Tower of Pisa is the best known of these, but Bologna has two leaning towers that date to the early eleventh century.
Last and best is La Grassa, “The Fat,” which Bologna embraces with a full stomach. Even in Italy, renowned globally for its fine food, Bologna is recognized as a standard setter. As the capital of Emilia-Romagna in Northern Italy, the city is the center of a rich agricultural region that produces balsamic vinegar, Parmigiana Reggiano cheese, and salamis and meats of all kinds, including Mortadella Bologna. That of course is where baloney, the U.S. version, gets its name, but the less said about that the better. And Bologna’s kitchens have given the world some very special foods, such as tagliatelle, tortelloni, and Bolognese, the local ragu that shows up on the menu of nearly every Italian restaurant.
After our dubious introduction to Bologna through the train station, our hotel more than made up for that bad impression. The Art Hotel Commercianti dates to the 1100s, and in the 1400s served as part of the University of Bologna. It has recently been remodeled to include modern apartments. Ours looked down on the Piazza Maggiore, the city’s social hub, and stands across a narrow road from the Basilica of San Petronio, a historic Bologna landmark.
This was the Bologna we were seeking — a city known for its splendid cuisine and medieval accents. In contrast to Florence, which stands as the apotheosis of the Italian Renaissance, or Rome, where you can walk in the footsteps of the Caesars, Bologna takes you to the Middle Ages, when kings and dukes battled popes over who would rule; when cities battled rival cities for power and wealth; and when families within those cities battled each other for dominance.
Nothing better tells this story than Bologna’s twin leaning towers, Asinelli and Garisenda, which peer down on a busy city intersection and list toward each other as if reeling from a night of too much Lambrusco.
Tower construction was a trend in Italian cities in the Middle Ages. Besides Pisa, San Gimignano in Tuscany stands as a living museum to the tower building craze, with fourteen of its original seventy-two towers still standing.
At the peak of this trend some one hundred twenty towers probably spiked Bologna’s skyline between the 1000s and the 1400s, making the city a sort of medieval Manhattan. One historian estimates there were as many as one hundred eighty, and today about twenty of these towers still stand. Don’t be surprised if you turn a corner on a narrow lane to find yourself looking up at a 200-foot structure soaring over neighborhood rooftops.
Asinelli and Garisenda are prime examples of the building craze. Asinelli, at 318 feet, is the taller, while Garisenda reaches 157 feet. Built between 1019 and 1029, the towers are named for the families that constructed them. During their primacy they served variously as fortresses, residences and even jails, as rival families fought each other in Bologna’s labyrinthine lanes for power and wealth. Think Montagues and Capulets in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and you get the idea. There were probably even star-crossed lovers playing out romances in the shadows of these spires.
In October 2023 Garisenda was discovered to be teetering too much for comfort and has been closed. This tower started to lean soon after it was built, and in the 1300s its top was lopped off, reducing it from 200 feet tall to the present 157 feet, to keep it from toppling. Today it leans at a 4-degree angle, which is more than the Tower of Pisa. The city is in the process of raising funds to stabilize the structure, which will take years to accomplish.
Asinelli’s tilt is a scant 1.3 degrees, and it remains open to tourists bold enough to climb the interior 498 wooden stairs to its top. Unlike Garisendi, Asinelli was raised in the 1300s from its original height of 230 feet to its current 318 feet. At about this same time a foot bridge was built connecting the two towers, apparently by the Duke of Milan, the city’s overseer, who wanted to control rioting in the streets. Asinelli has survived lightning strikes, fires, partial collapses, and even Allied bombing raids during World War II. Volunteers directed rescue operations from its roof during those raids, guiding rescuers to places where bombs had hit.
Among the many notable landmarks damaged by those bombing raids was the Palace of Archiginnasio, on the Piazza Maggiore. This palace was built in the 1500s to house the growing University of Bologna, which was strewn throughout the city. According to city lore, Pope Pius IV had an ulterior motive for building the Archiginnasio, and it wasn’t to advance education. His aim was to situate the Archiginnasio adjacent to the Basilica de San Petronio, which was growing too big for its breeches. Bologna’s civic leaders had a longstanding fractious relationship with the popes, who technically ruled the city, and they intended to expand their church to rival Saint Peter’s in Rome. One early basilica plan included a dome, but after construction of two supporting pillars the dome was abandoned as too ambitious. By placing the Archiginnasio right next to the church, Pope Pius IV prevented any expansion, and San Petronio was hemmed in.
However, by containing the basilica and advancing the university, the pope inadvertently encouraged unwanted scientific advances. The Palace of Archiginnasio houses an anatomical theater, originally constructed in 1637, where physicians dissected cadavers for the purpose of teaching human anatomy. The theater is a lush wood-paneled rectangle where students sat on benches along the wall. As we sat on those benches we imagined ourselves in the places of those students, as professors sliced up bodies on a marble table below while from a window above and behind us a priest condemned the whole affair as godless and sinful.
The theater and the Archiginnasio were among Bologna’s many buildings damaged in World War II bombing raids. After the war the building and theater were restored using the original materials and design as much as possible. Today the Palace of Archiginnasio is a municipal library housing priceless books and manuscripts.
The Basilica of San Petronio, in the meantime, never got its dome and in some ways was never completed. Its red brick facade is only partially adorned in white marble, quite unlike other cathedrals that sport ornate facings. Several attempts were made to gussy it up, but that dream was never realized and the city has embraced the church’s humble exterior. San Petronio remains the fifth largest church on the Italian Peninsula and is one of the largest brick churches in the world. Its vast interior contains twenty-two elaborate chapels, and a meridian line marks the path of the sun in the church floor, a testament to Bologna’s scientific traditions.
Bologna’s other architectural charm is its 33-mile network of porticoes — covered walkways that connect throughout the city. These arcades date to the Middle Ages, and the longest extends more than two miles up a mountain to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca.
On our final day we took a predawn taxi to this 18th-century basilica, which offers a breathtaking view of the city and surrounding countryside. We watched as the rising sun bathed “La Rossa” in a lush pink light, then walked the entire 2.3 miles of the Portico of San Luca to our hotel, watching the city come to life.
When we reached our hotel we were met by Rita Mattioli, a Bologna chef and teacher. As someone who has been making Bolognese I wanted to see how it is done in the authentic style. Rita, who has operated restaurants and taught food history in the University of Bologna, was the ideal teacher.
On the way to Rita’s place we got to see Bologna through the eyes of someone who has lived there most of her life. At one time, she pointed out, the Asinelli and Garisenda had giant wooden structures bolted to their sides, like tree houses. People lived in these appendages, which occasionally collapsed into the street with the expected casualties. We also stopped along Via Piella and peered through the “canal window.” Bologna, much like Venice, once was interlaced with a system of canals that served as sources of energy and transport. Most of those canals have been overbuilt with roads, but this is one place where an old watercourse comes into view as it funnels between multicolored buildings.
Rita operates cooking classes in her apartment, which is located within the walls of Bologna’s old city. Vendors selling fruit, vegetables and herbs were lined up on her street, which seemed appropriate. As we climbed the stairs to her place, she explained that we were now in what was once Bologna’s Jewish ghetto.
Rita’s place is a light-filled exemplar of Italian design, with an emphasis on food. We were soon wearing aprons and mixing flour, eggs and olive oil to make pasta for home-made tagliatelle, tortelloni and ravioli.
Rita makes pasta in the traditional Italian way. She shapes the flour into a bowl then drops in the eggs and combines them until she has a paste. She then presses the dough thinner and thinner using a long wooden roller until you can practically see through it. This thin layer is pasta sfoglia. We managed after about twenty minutes to get our layer thin enough, and we do this at home now.
Next Rita folded and sliced our dough to make tagliatelle, a pasta strand about as wide as a pencil. She also cut out forms for tortelloni, which are pasta shells stuffed with a mix of ricotta, egg, parsley and Parmigiana cheese. The tagliatelle was simple, but the tortelloni was a trickier matter. When I tried to stuff the pasta with the filling, my tortelloni were more like lumpy rocks than delicate shells, while Rita’s tortelloni flew off her fingers as if she were performing a magic trick.
Then Rita showed how to make Bolognese sauce, but she stressed that, as with many folk dishes, there is no one true way to make it. She learned how to make pasta and Bolognese at her grandmother’s elbow, and her recipe has been handed down through generations. Bolognese starts with carrot, onion, celery and garlic cooked in olive oil, then includes generous portions of ground beef, sausage, and pancetta or prosciutto. After adding bay leaf, wine, tomato puree, and broth, she finished with some salt and pepper and a spoon of tomato paste. The essential ingredient is time on the stove — two hours — to let the sauce gain character. When I asked Rita if she added butter or cream, as many stateside recipes call for, she shook her head as if that were an entirely alien concept. She said Bolognese done the Bologna way never includes dairy of any kind.
When our Bolognese was in the pot — we couldn’t eat it yet because it needed to simmer — Rita heated some of her premade sauce and cooked the tortelloni and tagliatelle. The traditional way to cook tortelloni, she explained, is in a broth-based sauce. Seven tortelloni comprise a serving, which is followed by another course. Homemade tagliatelle is the ideal mate for Bolognese, which clings to the pasta in a perfect marriage.
Tortelloni, tagliatelle, and Bolognese accompanied by a glass of chianti and wonderful cross-cultural conversation — how many times has this scenario played out in the apartments ensconced within Bologna’s rose-colored buildings? La Rossa, La Dotta, La Turrita, La Grassa — whatever it’s called, Bologna is worth the train fare to get there.