Bologna

Everything in Bologna radiates from Piazza Maggiore. Its south side is filled by the Basilica di San Petronio, begun in 1390 and, at 132 metres long, the largest brick church in the world. Its facade stops halfway between marble and raw brick, a shortfall the audio guide explains through five centuries of papal politics. Inside, the floor is cut by Cassini's meridian line of 1655, 66.8 metres long and still tracking the sun at noon. Across the square, Palazzo d'Accursio has been the seat of city government since the 14th century and now houses the municipal art collections, while at the corner Giambologna's bronze Neptune's Fountain has been the meeting point of the city since 1567.

Medieval Bologna bristled with as many as a hundred tower-houses, and the two that survive at the head of Via Rizzoli remain its emblem. The Asinelli rises 97 metres and can be climbed for a view that reaches the Apennines; its shorter neighbour, the Garisenda, leans a dramatic 3.2 metres, so alarmingly that Dante used it as a simile in the Inferno and the city sealed it off in 2023 for a decade of stabilisation work. The audio guide tells you what both looked like when they were built, between 1109 and 1119, and why so many families competed to build higher. A few streets away, the slender Torre Azzoguidi shows how the rest of the forest of towers once looked.

The University of Bologna has no campus; it is the city. Its first purpose-built home was the Palazzo dell'Archiginnasio of 1563, whose courtyard walls are papered with thousands of painted coats of arms of students and professors. Upstairs, the wooden Teatro Anatomico of 1637 is where dissections were performed beneath a ceiling of carved constellations, watched over by two flayed figures known as the Spellati. The university's modern heart lies along Via Zamboni, a porticoed street of faculties and student bars, where Palazzo Poggi keeps the cabinets of curiosities, wax anatomical models and 18th-century ship models that once made Bologna a scientific capital.

Follow Via Santo Stefano to the most atmospheric square in the city. The triangular Piazza Santo Stefano opens onto the Basilica of Santo Stefano, a labyrinth of interlocking chapels known as the Sette Chiese that grew from a 5th-century church built over a temple of Isis. The audio guide walks you through its round Holy Sepulchre, its Romanesque cloister and the courtyard with the basin said to be Pilate's. Next door, Corte Isolani threads a passage of medieval courtyards from the square through to Strada Maggiore, under a 13th-century wooden portico.

Bologna's reputation for eating is earned in the tight grid of lanes east of Piazza Maggiore. The Quadrilatero has been the market quarter since the Middle Ages, its streets still named for the guilds that worked there; the guide points out how the mediaeval trades map onto today's delis hanging with mortadella and windows full of hand-rolled tortellini. The Mercato di Mezzo turns a 19th-century covered market into a lunch hall, and at the Osteria del Sole, open since 1465, you bring your own food and buy only the wine.

The porticoes are Bologna's signature, and the greatest of them leaves the city altogether. The Portico di San Luca runs almost 3.8 kilometres and 666 arches uphill from Porta Saragozza to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca, a hilltop basilica whose icon has been carried down to the city in procession every spring since 1433. Back in the centre, the Portico del Pavaglione beside the Archiginnasio is the city's elegant promenade, the arcade where Bolognesi have strolled and shopped for four centuries.

The historic centre is compact, flat and largely closed to traffic, so a full day of listening can be done on foot: Piazza Maggiore, the Two Towers, Santo Stefano and the university quarter are all within fifteen minutes of each other. Bologna Centrale station is a ten-minute walk up Via dell'Indipendenza, and the San Luca hill can be reached by the portico, by the tourist train from Piazza Maggiore, or by city bus to Porta Saragozza.