Day 7
Bologna isn’t much of a tourist town, but perhaps this simple nature is its best characteristic. Its streets are lined with porticoes that cover the sidewalks and leave the buildings with no setback from the street itself. Walking along the main thoroughfare, the Via dell’Indipendenza, there are shops and bars as you head to the Piazza Maggiore.
Today we took a bit of time to walk around Bologna during the day. Our first visit was to the giant San Petronio Basilica, one of the largest in Europe. Left undecorated, this huge, cavernous church sits on the south end of the main square. We then walk towards to the Towers of Bologna, two tall brick towers remaining from the medieval ages where a hundred towers surrounded the city.
I have a fondness for ascending towers and churches, perhaps because they represent the state of the art in engineering in those times. Usually you are rewarded with a beautiful view of the organic layout of a city below. There’s no light show, virtual reality or audio guide: Just a typically rickety set of stairs and the top with a view. The towers here are exactly this, you pay three euros and climb up.
Bologna, still new to potential tourist interests, is delightfully old school: the tourist map shows tortellini as one of the potential highlights of your trip but also fails to identify the names of historic sites marked on the streets. As we leave for Rome, we bid it farewell and remember to return: the food is good, the streets are filled with locals and the countryside of interesting stories.
Rome, two hours away on a brand new ETR600, styled by Italian design house Pininfarina, is an altogether different animal. The train station is busy and crowded, the streets nearby are narrow and dirty. Tomorrow we will finally see the Sistine Chapel, after missing it five years ago!
Calum Tsang's Journal 