The Cities · 26 – 28 June
La Grassa · La Dotta · La Rossa
The fat one, the learned one, the red one — forty kilometers of porticoes deep.
Our days here
La Cronaca
Bologna's university has been in session since 1088 — the oldest in the western world, older than the cathedral of Notre-Dame, old enough that Dante, Petrarch and Copernicus all passed through its argument. The city built itself around students: the porticoes were extended so scholars could walk, read and quarrel out of the rain.
Those porticoes now run nearly forty kilometers and carry a UNESCO listing; under them, the Quadrilatero market grid has been selling mortadella, parmesan and fresh sfoglia on the same corners since the Middle Ages.
Of the hundred towers that once made Bologna a medieval Manhattan, two remain at the center: Asinelli, climbable and severe, and Garisenda, leaning so alarmingly that Dante used it as a simile in the Inferno. The city has been watching it with instruments ever since.
L'Atlante Locale
Every pin opens in Maps — the whole city, one thumb away.
Il Pratico
The food valley holds its heat. The porticoes are the city's own shade — walk under them at noon.
Loose linen for market mornings; an appetite calibrated for two pasta services a day. The Asinelli climb is 498 wooden steps — soft soles.
Una Nota Da Portare Dentro
Hospitality as architecture: a city that roofed its sidewalks so no guest would ever walk in the rain.