Bed and breakfast accommodation in Bologna Monasteries

Beautiful, historic Bologna is a mellow red-brick city known for its wealth, its ancient university and its left-wing politics. Surrounded by sprawling suburbs housing the hi-tech industries that fuel its modern wealth, the centre is surprisingly compact, a series of stunning porticoed streets radiating from the main squares of Piazza Maggiore and Piazza del Nettuno. The latter is named for Giambologna’s superb Neptune fountain, overlooked by medieval civic buildings. Piazza Maggiore is home to the great 14th-century church of San Petronio, and it’s from here that streets lead through the city’s famous food markets to the university district, with its fine buildings and churches. These include the Archiginnasio complex, built in 1565 as part of the university, and the Due Torre, the only survivors of the hundreds of towers built in Bologna during the Middle Ages. 

Bologna’s main museums include the Pinacoteca Nazionale, the Museo Civico Archeologico and the wonderfully bizarre Museo di Anatomia Umana, crammed with the startlingly realistic anatomical waxworks once used for teaching.

An Etruscan foundation, Bologna became a Roman city, its temples dedicated to Roman gods. Christianity was established before the fall of Rome, with the city later part of the territory of Byzantine Ravenna. During the 5th century it was repeatedly sacked by the Goths and it was its semi-legendary Bishop Petronius, today Bologna’s patron saint, that rebuilt the city and founded the Basilica di San Stefano. Petronius himself is believed to have come from a noble Roman family who converted and became a priest. By the 11th century, it was a thriving centre, and the establishment of the university in 1088 ensured its status and that of the church. Ruled until 1506 by a single family, the Bentivoglio, it was then part of the Papal States, remaining so until 1796. Bologna’s modern history is that of Italy, though it’s worth noting its renown as having been a major stronghold of the Italian Communist Party.