Bologna Special Report

4 February It's a nice Saturday morning in Florence, with the temperature in the high 30s and partly sunny skies.

We had our first day excursion out of Florence yesterday and in fact our first trip ever to the city of Bologna, which is only about an hour, 20 minutes by train (less than an hour on the Eurostar). When we left Florence at about 10 am it was a gray, drab, cold morning but about midway through the mountains on our way to Bologna the sun came out and it turned nice and warm by the time we arrived at about 11:20. Since this was a Friday we had made our return reservations online the day before so we had both tickets with us when we left Florence – as it turned out this was a smart thing since many of the trains leaving Bologna late in the day were full already and we wanted to be assured we had seats on the return. The downside is we wont’ have much time to explore the city since we have to catch the 16:40 train back to Florence.

Curiously Bologna is given short shrift by most guidebooks while some, like Rick Steves doesn’t even mention the city in his Italy guides. Anyway we relied on Matt Lepori’s travel notes found on www.slowtrav.com. Matt is an American who studied in Bologna for a year in 2003. His notes (dated 2004) were very helpful and insightful, albeit a bit weak on directions (left/right instead of east/west). He also provides lots of good tips for the college age traveler to Bologna. We used the online map provided by Matt (it turns out to be a scanned copy of the local tourist map) but the printout wasn’t great; still it was enough to get us headed in the right direction. Be aware that there is no tourist information office at the train station but there is an excellent office with plenty of advice and great free maps at the TI office off the Piazza Maggiore. They can also help you with getting tickets for the museums etc.

OK so why go to Bologna then. I mean people must be avoiding it for a reason, right?

Well you should go for several reasons: one it is the home of one of the oldest and largest universities in Europe; it’s also the home of one of Italy’s greatest pasta sauces (Bolognese), and it’s in the heart of the region of Emilia Romagna which also lays claim to parmigiana reggiano cheese. (OK and it also gave the name to a particular type of sausage favored by young and old in America: “baloney”.)

The city is, we thought, an architectural wonder. In the early days when the city was still enclosed by a wall (small parts of which can still be found in evidence) in order to use every bit of space available and foster growth the citizens would build extensions of their homes out over and above the sidewalks, developing in essence a rough sort of “portico”, These eventually evolved from wooden overhead affairs to beautiful ornate porticos covering most of the city center. According to Matt in 1289 porticos became a mandated feature of the city and if you built a new building it had to incorporate a portico. The result is spectacular and photos cannot do justice to the sheer scale of these things. Today you can walk and shop and chat or whatever all under the protection of a wonderful portico covering very wide sidewalks, a real treat for us after negotiating the narrow, dog-poop infested sidewalks of Florence.

Speaking of dog poop – I mean why not? – Italians have a fondness for dogs but not a particular fondness for cleaning up after them, and although it is a law that they do so, like many laws the Italians pretty much ignore this one too. However, unlike in Siena where the city streets, which are shared by vehicles as well as pedestrians and their dogs, are cleaned daily, the Florentine sidewalks remain minefields of poop requiring paying more attention to the pavement than to the surrounding buildings, lingerie stores and motor scooters whizzing by in every direction.

OK so Bologna is cool from an architectural standpoint. This makes it a great city to just stroll around in, and since we had no real sightseeing objective that’s pretty much what we did.

We crossed Viale Pietro Pietramellara, turned left and walked one block toward the entrance to the Parco della Montagnola – believe me you can’t miss it. But we didn’t go into the park and instead turned right and walked through one of the old gates of the city, the Porta Galliera, standing forlorn it seemed without any attached walls. As we were walking through the gate however, looking down you could glimpse not only some of the original wall structure but part of the canal system, which at one time covered the old city inside the walls as did numerous gardens (some of those remain today). Now they are all pretty much paved over but here you can see the canal still filled with water, and the water seemed to be moving at a pretty quick pace too I might add.

Anyway we were headed for the very heart of the city, Piazza Maggiore and so we turned right onto Via Indipendenza and walked beneath our first portico. Well OK we’ve walked under porticos before, it’s true, but these went on and on and on; I think you get the picture. So we joined the thousands of other people strolling the city, going somewhere, many of them in a hurry, but some like us, particularly the young (the University of Bologna has 100,000 students, 80,000 of whom live in the city) taking their time about getting there.

After a walk of about 20 minutes or so we were at the very heart of the old city, in the Piazza Nettuno (Neptune) – which comprises some strikingly unique and typically Italian statuary. Right off this piazza is something else worth seeing: an enormous permanent photographic monument to the partisans who died during the Second World War. A unique tribute indeed and one can only assume Bologna resistance played a large part in the destruction of fascism.

A few meters away is Piazza Maggiore where we decided to sit outside in the sun at one of the café’s on the piazza overlooking the enormous (and unfinished) Basilica San Petronia. (Matt’s notes informed us that it is the 5th largest church in the world. It was never finished or rather at least the outside facing was never finished because they ran out of money. A pretty typical story for all of us.)

We had caffe and “spremuta”, or freshly squeezed orange juice, in this case, blood oranges from Sicily. These were the best we’ve tasted so far, very sweet indeed (they are often very acidic we think). After watching people for a while we decided to walk over to the Basilica and go inside – which we did. Matt warned us the church was enormous and he was right; to use his word, “cavernous” is almost an understatement. But curiously it was largely devoid of any large-scale decoration.

Equally curious, however, were two fascinating and still somewhat mysterious discoveries: in one of the numerous side chapels is a large, active replica of Foucault’s pendulum, and along much of the floor on the left side of the church was a line representing I believe a meridian used in the measurement of the earth. Unfortunately before we could inquire as to either of these two fascinating features and find out more details the church closed and we had to move quickly before we became locked in for the day. Anyway I’ve tried to find out more online about these two features of this church but have so far been unsuccessful.

Matt had suggested a walk outside the walls to a small church southwest of the city on a hill, which gives (he claims) a wonderful view of the city. The thing that intrigued us about the walk was it is entirely under a portico! He also suggested checking out the two towers in the heart of the city. But since our time was severely limited we will have to say that for our next trip.

So instead we walked around the city for a while longer, and continued to be amazed at what a cool place this is. We stopped at a great little bistro, called oddly enough, “Rosarose Bistrot” (Via Clavature 18/b), located just off the Piazza Maggiore. In fact, we think it was their “Rosarose Café” on Piazza Maggiore where we had had our caffe earlier in the day. Anyway we each had a delicious salad (“insalata”) with a Lugana white wine and after a relaxing meal resumed our stroll. We walked without any real direction and soon found ourselves skirting the eastern side of the huge basilica walking along Via Archiginnasio where we came across an open door leading into a beautiful courtyard. Naturally we had to explore and found ourselves inside the aptly named Archigennasio, home to the city library. It was also reportedly the first site for the city’s university.

Anyway we followed the open stairway to the left off the courtyard and admired the frescoes in the stairway as we walked up to the second (OK first) floor. There we found the anatomy theater. According to Matt this is Italy’s second oldest (after Padova), and it is built entirely out of wood. Originally constructed in 1647, the theater was heavily damaged by bombing during the Second World War and is today a copy of the original. But, as Matt says, it “is still very, very cool.” Note the figurines behind the lecturer’s chair are carved, skinless nude men, showing the muscles, ligaments, etc.

Off we were again to stroll, look at the city’s wonders. It must also be added that one appealing aspect of a city which has so many young people about is the expressions of love seen almost everywhere. Pretty cool I’d say.

We are continually amazed at why more tourists don’t come to Bologna for at least a day or two – in fact we don’t know anyone who has been here. One would probably need at least an overnight if not two nights to savor what this city has to offer

So we walked back to the train station arriving about 20 minutes before our train was scheduled to leave. The station was packed and it was a good thing we had gotten our tickets from the self-service machines in Florence before we left since even the machines had terribly long queues. We found our train on the departure board and walked to platform no. 9 (“binario 9”). Our train was the express from Milan to Siracusa (on the island of Sicily) so naturally is arrived about 30 minutes late. We found our carriage (“carrozza) and then our seats (“posti”) which was a good thing since many people don’t opt to pay the small additional charge for a reserved seat and therefore one can find oneself without a seat whatsoever. (This was particularly true of the young men sitting in our compartment when we got there. Fortunately for them a couple of seats remained available during our leg of the trip anyway.)

Anyway we left Bologna about 40 or 45 minutes late and yet arrived in Florence only 10 minutes late (hmmmmmm). Since we had had little choice on our return train we had to get off at the Campo Marte station, or rather non-station, which is on the eastern side of the city – Santa Maria Novella is the main train station on the western side of the city – and in effect you walk off the tracks, under the other platforms and directly onto the street. That’s it, no building, no terminal, nothing, “niente”. But we had our map and figured it would be an easy stroll home, and since it was a nice evening out we walked. And since we had not yet been to this part of the city we appreciated the opportunity to stroll through the neighborhood and to just be together.

So we got back to your neighborhood, stopped at Osteria Ortolano and picked up some fresh pasta stuffed with artichoke and ricotta cheese on our way home. I fixed the pasta with a gorgonzola and cream cheese sauce, paired with a wonderful Carmignano red wine. Hungry yet?

19 March About 8:30 Saturday morning we headed over to the Santa Maria Novella train station and caught the Eurostar to Bologna. We used the Italian railway’s website to order our tickets in advance and even though we went second class we had to buy reserved seats when using the Internet – which as it turned out was a good thing. The trains going and returning were packed and lots of folks who didn’t have seats reserved spent part of their time aboard looking for open seats after each stop.

Here let me put in a couple of unpaid plug for Trenitalia, the Italian railway system, and in particular for the Eurostar trains.

First using the internet, which we do nearly all the time now, works like a charm. Order your tickets online and you have the option of going to the station and using the ticket machines to get our purchased tickets (and it worked fine) or, depending upon the train you can just print out the email sent to you by Trenitalia and show it to the conductor on board. They then issue you a ticket. We used this latter method for this trip and it worked great as well. No muss no fuss. Oh and Trenitalia also sent text messages to my mobile phone with all the train information (including reservation number.) for each leg of our trip. Pretty slick. Second, the Eurostar trains are newer than the IR (Interregional), IC (Intercity) and most of the other types as well, and so the facilities are in better shape as well. They also make far fewer stops.

You can now access most Italian city bus systems online and download and print out maps and timetables. Some cities like Bologna for example, even provide an interactive online map. Very helpful to be sure but it also means you spend less time looking for the tourist information office which may or may not be open.

So we arrived at the train station just northwest of downtown Bologna a little after 10 am, pick up a handful of local bus tickets inside the station at the “tabacchi” and cross the street from the station to the major city bus stop and pick up the D bus which will take us to the Porta Saragozza, on the southwest side of the city. (The number 20 will also take you there as well.) When we visited Bologna before we had heard about the world’s longest portico, which climbs to a large hill overlooking the city and so that is one of the two reasons we have returned. The other is that we read about an enormous home show going on in the city and thought we would drop in and see what it was all about. More of that later.

So we got off the D bus at the Porta Saragozza, crossed under the porta -- effectively outside one of the ancient walls of the city. We see the portico directly ahead of us, cross the street and begin our “trek” to the Santuario di Madonna di San Luca. Originally designed for pilgrims who would make the climb to the top of the mountain for worship, the portico, at least, in its initial stages, is lined with shops and caffes as it runs alongside Via Saragozza. After walking for about 15 minutes or so the porotico crosses the road, or rather above the road, and then we begin the most arduous part of the trip: the steep, uphill climb to the Santuario. This is something to clearly bear in mind for this is not for the weak of limb or lazy of bones. This is a serious climb so be prepared.

After 666 arches, nearly 3.5kms (some 2 miles), stripping away half of our clothes, and what seems like four or five hundred thousand steps (well OK maybe not that many but pretty close) we arrived at the top. The views of the northwestern part of the city were pretty dramatic indeed – but the letdown was that we could not see much of the rest of the city – the really great views were in the back of the church, which was apparently inaccessible to the public. But it was a great hike and well worth doing – and I think just to walk the portico is something that should be done by the traveler looking for something different. It is the journey after all, right?

So we walked back down, crossed Via Saragozza and picked up the D bus, (both the D and number 20 busses go up and down Via Saragozza). At the train station we picked up the number 10 bus. After about 10 minutes we got off at the Bologna “Fiera” (“fair”) which is basically an enormous conference and exhibition complex. And enormous is probably an understatement here. The place consisted of some 15 or so pavilions, some larger than a football field, nearly each of which had eating areas and many had multiple stories. Man was this place big.

So we had read about this huge home show that was ending on Saturday, the 18th and thought hey let’s go back to Bologna, walk the portico and check out the home show. Well we get to the home show and the first pavilion we went to, the “Color and Decorating” pavilion, was, you guessed it, all about paint; everything you could possibly want to know about paint: how to make it, how to mix it, and on and on. The pavilion with the wrought iron was designed largely to demonstrate the machinery used in making the wrought iron. OK you get the point.

This was a home show all right, but a show for men and women involved in the trades, for those involved in the building processes and the building supplies aspect of the home construction world. I mean there was one pavilion focusing just on heavy security doors and the like; another on wood and wood processing equipment.

Once again we let our American-based assumptions get the better of us and didn’t read closely enough – I mean after the fact we said to ourselves, it was curious that in the online catalog of exhibitors not one of the appliance companies or makers of bathroom fixtures listed. We agreed we read what we wanted to read – maybe it was just a subconscious excuse maybe to return to Bologna.

Still there were some interesting things to see: the painting of women’s bodies b local artists -- although I’m still not sure what the point was here – it was of course a booth display by the paint company Arco. Of course, for Italians when it comes to women’s bodies just showing them is often the point I suppose. And there was the display of enormous one piece (?) curving staircases; the huge wrought iron grates, to mention just two. But mainly it was lots and lots of equipment and machinery used by the pros. Not an appliance or tablecloth in sight.

We needed a break so we popped into one of the eating areas, grabbed a couple of pannini and relaxed before striking out for the natural stone pavilion. I let Susan tackle that by herself and I found a place to sit and take some photos.

We then grabbed the no. 10 bus and headed back to the train station where caught the 5:46 for home.

We slept for 10 hours. Go figure.

Wish you were here,

Steve