Things to do in Bologna

Landmark · Centro storico

The civic square with San Petronio's half-finished brick façade, and the medieval market grid immediately east of it.

Local tip: The Quadrilatero's food shops are best before one o'clock and are genuinely working shops, not a display. The Sala Borsa across the square is a public library built over Roman and medieval excavations you can see through the glass floor — free, quiet and open to anyone.

Culture · City-wide, and the hill to the south-west

Some 62 kilometres of covered arcade, UNESCO-listed since 2021, including the 3.8-kilometre climb of 666 arches to the sanctuary of San Luca.

Local tip: The San Luca portico is the longest in the world and is how Bolognesi exercise — an hour up, with the last third steep. Start at Porta Saragozza. The Meloncello arch halfway is the point where most people decide whether they meant it.

Culture · East of Piazza Maggiore

A complex of interlocking churches and courtyards built over a Roman temple, layered from late antiquity onward.

Local tip: Free, and far more atmospheric than San Petronio. The Cortile di Pilato and the twelfth-century cloister are usually near-empty in the early morning. The square outside is where the city sits in the evening.

Nightlife · West and north-east of the centre

Bologna's drinking streets — Pratello for the old osterie, Via Zamboni and Via Petroni for the student crowd.

Local tip: Pratello is where people over thirty go and where the political and musical history of the city is still visible on the walls. Zamboni is loud, cheap and entirely student. They are ten minutes apart and completely different cities.

Nature · Just south of the walls

The city's main park, with a nineteenth-century lake and a set of restored greenhouses now used as a public workspace and events venue.

Local tip: Le Serre dei Giardini is a working coworking space and bar inside the old municipal nursery greenhouses — one of the few places in Bologna where you can sit and work all afternoon for the price of a coffee.

Culture · West, beside the Meloncello arch

A Carthusian monastery turned monumental cemetery in 1801, built directly over an Etruscan necropolis, with two centuries of funerary sculpture in enclosed cloisters.

Local tip: Free, open daily, and almost always empty. Byron came here in 1819 and wrote about it; the nineteenth-century sculpture in the covered galleries is genuinely first rate. It sits at the foot of the San Luca portico, so the two make one afternoon.