Europe > Italy > Emilia-Romagna > Bologna > Articles > Bologna: Grassa Rossa Dotta

How to travel with a salmon is the title of a recent book of essays by Umberto Eco, arguably the University of Bologna’s most famous professor. However the mythical title of my recent return trip from Bologna would be more like How to travel with a huge chunk of Parmesan cheese. For at about £10 / kilo for a crumbly, golden-yellow vintage version (that means three years of gentle maturing in Reggio, only 60 km from Bologna), it feels like investing in cut-price gold. There should in fact be a Parmesan barometer of well-being, and if the Bolognesi had their way there would be a parallel one for tortellini, as grown Bolognesi men - obsessive gourmets all - come close to tears when recalling specific native tortellini that are now extinct.

In many ways Bologna has suffered from this reputation for being the Italian foodie heaven, as it has obscured everything else this city has to offer. In fact the oft-quoted epithet “la grassa” (the fat one) should be used in conjunction with two lesser known ones: “la rossa” (the red one - referring to the terracotta coloured brick and also to 50 years of Communist local government) and “la dotta” (the erudite one). For me, it is the combination of the latter two that best sums up this austerely beautiful city where towering buildings, not to speak of leaning towers themselves, create a memorably dwarfing effect.

Unlike its rival across the Apennines, Florence, there are no must-see buildings or works of art; it is the unity that counts. Even the shock sighting of two branches of McDonalds is tempered by the ban on their usual garish facades. So when you finally leave the city centre it feels like emerging from a grandiose, all-encompassing theatre-set - and then you discover that another of this underestimated city’s achievements was to have produced the Bibiena family, source of Europe’s greatest baroque theatres and stage-sets.

Frozen in apparent architectural harmony, yet in fact an amazing hotchpotch of medieval, Renaissance, baroque and Napoleonic neo-classicism, Bologna’s palazzi, churches and squares are linked by an unbelievable 38 km of porticoes. The story of these arcades is also the story of Bologna, so putting that flimsy “la grassa” label definitively to rest. “La dotta” became such due to the founding of Europe’s first university, in 1088, which brought such an influx of students that upper storeys had to be added onto existing buildings for accommodation. Supported by wooden pillars, these dramatically projecting floors created porticoes that gradually became more refined and brick-built. In this way, an instant solution to a housing shortage also created a social connection between Joe Public in the street and the bourgeois inhabitants of the mansions - and the genesis of Bologna’s strong democratic tradition.

Today students still form the life-blood of this city, making up a good 20% of a population. This is lucky as with Bologna claiming the lowest birth-rate in the world, it would otherwise be looking decidedly decrepit. Nor has the student epicentre budged from the libraries and bookshops of the Renaissance piazzas, the lecture halls of via Zamboni and the trattorie and osterie of via delle Belle Arti. So a closer look at Bologna’s university becomes a fascinating trip into the perspectives of past knowledge, above all at the Archiginnasio and the Palazzo Poggi, now the Rectorate.

Catholicism - all-important in this city which was ruled by popes for over three centuries, was at one point rimmed by 96 monasteries and is still chockablock with churches - is best forgotten along with the hideous interior of the unfinished basilica of San Petronio, an exercise in megalomania. Fortunately further enlargement was stopped by papal jealousy. Instead, intelligent prioritising resulted in the neighbouring Archiginnasio, built to bring the university schools together under one roof. Although the university started life as a law school, it was medecine and the world’s first dissection practised on the human body which shot it to fame. In the fantastic wood-panelled Anatomical Theatre, built in 1637, bombed to bits by the Allies in 1944 then faithfully reconstructed, statues of illustrious physicians are overshadowed by two ‘skinned’ anatomical figures. In the middle stands a repro marble dissection table - the authentically blood-stained one is now at Palazzo Poggi.

The spin-offs of Bologna's dissection prowess are further illustrated outside by a statue of the physicist Luigi Galvani. Bizarrely, this figure appears to be deeply engrossed in a book with a frog splayed across it. In fact Galvani’s dissection of frogs led to the discovery of electric currents (hence the word ‘galvanise’) - in tandem with his colleague Alexandro Volta - (of voltage fame). Despite this august past, further accentuated by walls blanketed in the students' coats of arms, the Archiginnasio pulsates with life as students zap in and out to consult 800,000 books in what is Italy’s greatest library. No mean feat. And with the neighbouring Caffe Zanarini finally reopened in all its 1924 glory, you’ll find me sitting outside fulminating over the excessive backside of San Petronio, galvanised by Galvani then swivelling my gaze to the upmarket shops beneath the porticoes of via Farini - but that’s another story.

Bologna's other secret treasure is the 18th century University Museum at Palazzo Poggi, where extraordinary exhibits are rivalled by stunning baroque ceilings and friezes. Astronomical instruments, a fake unicorn’s horn (in reality a carved whale’s tooth), cartography, optics - all fade into insignificance beside Bologna’s medical obsession. From the Obstetricians Room, where dozens of disturbingly hyperrealist sculptures illustrate different foetal positions, you move on to the Anatomical Room, where eerily perfect wax male and female bodies stand in dramatic poses. These are signed by Ercole Lelli, an Enlightenment precursor of our very 21st century YBA, Ron Mueck. Thus Bolognese theatrics return while art and science meet and “la dotta” becomes ever dottier.

After such intensity, you need to breathe. The moment has come to climb the 100m Asinelli Tower which tilts giddily beside its shorter and even more drunken companion tower. These pencil-thin brick constructions shooting up into the blue of the Emilia-Romagna sky were once status symbols and defensive retreats for Bologna’s eminent medieval families. 900 years on, they offer a vertiginous view over the red-tiled roofs and radial lay-out of this subtly persuasive city, caught between the northern plain and the southern hills, between knowledge and art and between parmiggiano and pecorino. Long may “la dotta, la grassa and la rossa” last.

A version of this was first published in the Financial Times.

Articles

• More from Fiona Dunlop