Bologna Part 1

We decided to go to the Italian city of Bologna, and booked an apartment there for twelve days.  Why Bologna?  We've been to the most famous Italy cities, like Rome and Florence, and were interested in some of the smaller cities, which don't have the landmark attractions of the big cities, but nonetheless have a lot of interesting things to see and do.   And, of course, the fact that Bologna is considered to be the culinary capital of Italy had nothing to do with our decision to go there.   And we also went with the idea of visiting many of the nearby cities on day trips by train, cities like Parma, Ravenna, Modena, Padua, etc.
Bologna turned out to be a fascinating city for walking, filled with layers of history.  One of the amazing things about Italy is the ongoing presence of tangible history in its older cities.  I don't think any other country of the world has so many present day cities filled with buildings from the distant past.   For example, there is a complex of churches in Bologna that began construction in the 5th century.  And many of the older buildings date from the Romanaesque period of architecture.  At the same time, everything is a patchwork of reconstruction, addition and alteration over the centuries, so the almost every church is almost a collage of archtectural styles and decorations.

Another fascinating thing about walking in Bologna is the ever present porticoes, which started to appear in medieval times.  They not only provide shelter from sun and rain, they are also beautiful.    And the colors of Bologna are special;  most buildings are painted somewhere in the spectrum from yellow to red.

In addition, like many older Italian cities, Bologna restricts cars in the center of the city, so it's a pleasure to walk around.

Here are pictures from wandering the streets:

The street where our apartment was:

The facade of a church, deconsecrated by Napoleon:

These are the famous "two towers" of Bologna, dating from a time when people were competitively building towers.   Sometimes it didn't go so well; both are leaning, and one of them was decapitated.

I really got carried way with the porticoes!



This was the ceiling of some fancy clothing store: