Bologna - City of Porticos

Day 11 (14 May 2025)

Today, we made our way to Bologna by train. We checked into our hotel at Amendola 16. It's a hotel that's conveniently located right across Bologna Centrale (the main train station). I chose this place because we're using Bologna not as a sightseeing spot but more as a hub to travel out so being near the train station is a huge plus.

The hotel room is large, clean and comfortable. The wifi is fast and there's Netflix! There's no reception desk but that's ok cos I got responses to my questions very quickly via WA. The only downside is the lift which again has manual doors and if someone either downstairs or upstairs didn't close the doors properly, the lift wouldn't work. The hotel is on the 3rd level so if you have luggage, that's a little inconvenient.

After we checked in, we walked around Bologna's city centre. First thing we noticed is all the arched covered walkways everywhere. Later, we discovered they're called porticoes and the porticos in the city centre itself cover up to 40km, more than any other city in the world. In fact, the porticos of Bologna are a UNESCO heritage site! 

Many of the porticos are very ornate with the family crests of nobility who sponsored them. 

This is Bologna's Love Lock Bridge. There used to be more canals throughout Bologna but few are left as people favoured roads.

In the middle of the main square is the Basilica of San Petronio which was never completed. Work started in 1390 and it was going to be humongous with the perimeter in the shape of a cross. But it dragged on a couple of hundred years until the Pope realise it would be bigger than the Vatican Church and ordered work to stop. To this day, it is left unfinished hence the asymetrical marble facade.  

I guess you can see from the inside when they decided to stop work 😂 

We also passed by the Fountain of Neptune. This was commissioned by a Cardinal in the 16th C to show his powerful alliance to the Pope via marriage but the story goes that the artist deliberately designed the fountain to be a little naughty to mock him. (Not sure if you can see in the photo but around the base of the fountain are four sea nymphs holding their ta-tas and water is squirting out of them 🧐

The trident of Neptune is the logo of Italian race car brand Maserati.

Bologna is known as the learned city because it's home to the oldest university in the world, from 1038. We didn't get around to visiting the university but we passed by a really cool bookshop.

 

Only in Italy can you find designer label highlighters 😆

 

Maybe this is unfair but after the grandeur and epic culture of Rome and Florence, Bologna feels like a poorer cousin. I personally found the city to be grittier and less friendly. There's also a lot of graffiti everywhere (like on EVERYTHING, as if there's a graffiti addict who goes out every night looking for any empty spot to express his neon dreams) which gives it a run-down feel. Bologna is less touristy and for the first time on this trip, I feel like we stick out as there are very few Asians here.

We tried a couple of Bologna specialities for lunch - passatelli (a pasta I've never seen) in broth and a Bolognese veal cutlet. Didn't take to both. Honestly, the former tasted like someone just dumped boiled pasta into Swanson's chicken broth, and the latter we expected Bolognese sauce - you know that tomato based sauce in spaghetti bolognese? But this one was covered in some cream sauce that managed to achieve the incredible feat of tasting both bland and salty at the same time. And the veal cutlet was hard and chewy. 

Sorry if this offends anyone, but we completely don't understand how Bologna can be considered the food capital of Italy 🤷 Perhaps we went to the wrong restaurant or ordered the wrong items, but this restaurant had lots of good ratings. The food wasn't cheap either, and the service was surly. 

We did have great gelato though. So far the food in Italy has been underwhelming. But the desserts and gelatos have been the saving grace! 

After the uninspirational lunch, Andre and I didn't feel inclined to go out for dinner, so we ended up just buying fruit and juice from the supermarket and vegging out in front of the TV watching Oppenheimer. Sometimes, simple is best 💜