Via d'Azeglio

About this audio guide

This guide to Via d'Azeglio in Bologna opens with a forty-five-year-old general stripped of every rank and title after an imperial court martial in February 1704, over his surrender of a fortress days before reinforcements arrived. It follows Luigi Ferdinando Marsili home to Bologna and up onto the roof of his family palace on this street, where he had already begun building an observatory and, within a year of his disgrace, opened his house to a private club of self-taught researchers. Look up at the covered balcony over the street where he once stepped out to check the sky himself.