Bologna
Sixty-two kilometres of covered pavement, and students since 1088
- When to go
- October 16° · 8 rainy days
- Per day
- ~42 · 92 · 107 €budget · mid · comfort, per person · checked 29 Sep 2026
- How many days
- 2–3days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 6 km Bologna · 67 km Forlì
- Right now
Bologna is called the learned, the fat and the red, and you collect all three nicknames in a single day. You walk it under porticoes — more than sixty-two kilometres of them, UNESCO-listed since 2021 — so you only notice the rain once you leave town.
The porticoes aren't decoration, they're a fix. Houses pushed their upper floors out over the street, which then needed columns beneath them, and a city statute of 1288 required a portico on every new house, because a university town needed room for students and incomers from the countryside. The result is covered pavement across the whole city.
Florence is thirty-seven minutes away by high-speed train, so Bologna also works as a base for it, and for Modena, Parma and Ravenna in the other direction. From the airport, the Marconi Express reaches the main station in seven minutes.
Guides for Bologna
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Bologna in 2 days
→Day one is the loop around the square and the towers, day two the climb along the world's longest portico to San Luca.
Day trips from Bologna
→Balsamic in Modena, dairies around Parma, mosaics in Ravenna, the walls of Ferrara — and Florence in a day.
Where to stay in Bologna
→Three different reasons for three different areas: student noise near the university, quiet by the station, or…
What Bologna costs
→Bologna is cheap to look at — the porticoes, the square and the Quadrilatero cost nothing, and the biggest item stays a…
The Bologna you miss: a canal window and seven churches in one
→A little window onto a canal, seven churches in one and a wooden anatomical theatre — places the main axis never shows…
What to eat in Bologna
→Ragù with tagliatelle, tortellini in broth, and wine in an osteria where you bring your own food from the market.
The best time to visit Bologna
→Bologna sits on a plain with no sea nearby, so summers are humid and warm. The porticoes keep the way dry in every…
What to see in Bologna
The porticoes and the San Luca walk
UNESCO-listed in 2021 as twelve component parts. The longest is the portico to the San Luca sanctuary, built between 1674 and 1721: 3,796 metres and 666 arches up the hill, the longest in the world. Go in the morning, in the shade, with a roof overhead the whole way, rain or not.
free
The Two Towers
The Asinelli is 97.2 metres with 498 wooden steps; the Garisenda is 48 metres and visibly leans. Nobody climbs the Garisenda, and the Asinelli climb is shut while work on its neighbour goes on, with no confirmed reopening date — don't build a day around it.
closed Asinelli closed (work on the neighbouring Garisenda), no confirmed reopening date; the Garisenda has never been open to climb · booking: not applicable — closed
The oldest university and the Archiginnasio
The University of Bologna has run since 1088. Its old seat, the Archiginnasio, has corridors covered in some six thousand students' coats of arms and a wooden seventeenth-century Anatomical Theatre, where two flayed human figures hold up the lecturer's chair. Entry with an audio guide is €10; closed Sundays.
€10 · closed Sunday
The Quadrilatero
A grid of narrow lanes between Piazza Maggiore and the towers, on the site of the medieval market — via Pescherie Vecchie, via Drapperie, via Caprarie. Many shops have passed down the same families for generations, and a few historic pharmacies still look like the old apothecaries.
free
- T
Tagliatelle and ragù
The width of a tagliatella was lodged at the Chamber of Commerce on 16 April 1972 — eight millimetres cooked. The ragù recipe has been there since 1982, written to dress the tagliatella worthily, and was revised in 2023. Alongside comes Mortadella Bologna IGP, which must be at least fifteen per cent fat cubes and is baked in a dry-air oven.
€14
- W
What used to be FICO
The food park FICO Eataly World closed in February 2024, and since September that year the same site has housed Grand Tour Italia, laid out region by region. It too ended 2025 with losses larger than its revenue and is cutting back its space. For Bologna's food, the Quadrilatero in the centre is enough.
Stories from Bologna
How it actually was when we were there, and what was worth it.
Bologna without the myth: why spaghetti bolognese does not exist
→The dish half the world names after this city is served in no serious kitchen here. Here is what stands in its place, and in which streets.
Two things you probably did not know
The University of Bologna has run without a break since 1088 and is the oldest in the world. Students originally paid the professors themselves and could dismiss them, so the university began as a guild of students, not of teachers.
Bologna has almost forty kilometres of covered pavement. The porticoes appeared in the Middle Ages when houses pushed their upper floors out over the street to make room for students, and they have been UNESCO listed since 2021.
Ready for Bologna?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Bologna — day trips or weekends.
Italy
→The cities on the high-speed line are an hour or two apart; the coast, Matera and the Tuscan hills lie off it
France
→From Paris the TGV reaches Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg in about two hours — France is chosen by direction, not by city
Spain
→A country where dinner is at ten and the city wakes up as everywhere else turns the lights off
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Front row for the next trip
Leave your email and we'll let you know when a new destination or story goes up.