The area now called Bologna, in Italy, was settled about three thousand years ago by a tribe called the Villanovese. They were conquered by the Etruscans, then by the Celts, then finally by the Romans, by which time the town was called Boronia, It was a thriving Roman colony for four hundred years, before being conquered in turn by waves of barbarian invaders, including the Visigoths, the Huns, the Ostrogoths, and the Lombards. Subsequently it was fought over by the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope. The city itself suffered civil war between the Guelphs, who backed the Pope, and the Ghibellines. Napoleon conquered the city from the Pope in the 18th Century. The Pope reacquired it after the fall of the Empire of the French. Bologna joined the unified Italian state during the War of Unification starting in 1860.

The city was a center of resistance against the fascist rule of Mussolini and the Germans. After the Second World War it became a center of radical left politics, though now less so than at the height of far left agitation in the early 1970s. It is a university town, which gives it much of its flavor.

Today, surrounded by hills, Bologna’s city center is much as it was in the Renaissance. One can find red colored buildings, covered walkways, and wide piazzas. Bologna can be a relatively quiet stop between the more crowded towns of Florence and Venice.

Basilica di San Petronio

This church was started in 1392 and is named after Bologna’s patron saint. It is a large building, and was meant eventually to be larger that St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. But the Pope forbade that sort of overweening ambition. Even so, San Petronio is the fifth largest basilica in the world.

On the eastern side of the basilica, one can see semi-constructed apses jutting from the basilica walls and an incomplete facade. The central doorway, made by sculptor Jacopo della Quercia, dates from 1425 and has exquisite carvings of scenes from the Old and New Testament and a beautiful Madonna and Child. The chapels inside contain frescos by Giovanni da Modena and Jacopo di Paolo. A brass meridian in the floor of the north aisle forms an ingenious solar clock – a small hole in the roof allows the sun to shine on the correct spot. Tradition has it that when the sun’s rays fall in the shape of a heart, it is time to seek a husband.