wandering words: Bologna

On Wednesday we took the high speed train from Bolzano to Bologna. The train left early in the afternoon so we had the morning to have a leisurely coffee and wander around the centre of town a bit.

The scenery from the train was still mountainous for a while, then changed to flat agricultural land about half way. We arrived in Bologna about 4:00 pm, and we checked into a small hotel near the station.

After a bit of reading we found that the main center of Bologna is the Piazza Maggiore, about 20 minutes walk from the hotel, so we headed in that direction.

We could see right away that the architecture was quite different from what we've seen so far. In contrast to the bright Baroque architecture of Rome, Bologna is full of red brick, Medieval buildings from the 1200's or 1300's.

As we walked down the main street toward the square, we found we were walking under a long series of arched, covered walkways, or porticoes. Apparently Bologna has almost 40 km of them.

The Piazza Maggiore is surrounded by red brick buildings that were Medieval adminstrative buildings, and St Petronius Basilica.

Branching off from the main square are little sidestreets filled with restaurants and food shops. Bologna is supposed to be a 'foodie' capital and this is where it's at. The streets were very lively with restaurant patios filled with people.

We had a dinner of the local specialty Tagliette al Ragu, and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we walked to the square again and went inside the basilica. In addition to the impressive altar, it has the world's oldest organ, and a line of longitude engraved in the 1600's.

Next we walked down to the towers of Gaisenda and Asinelli, which are symbolic of Bologna.

Garisenda is the shorter on and leans at an angle of 4 degrees, even more than the tower of Pisa. The Asinelli tower is 97 m high, built in 1109, and for a fee you can climb the 498 stepa to the top.