Walking Tour

SAIS arranged several walking tours of Bologna to help students get to know their adopted city a little better. I went on one this morning. It was absolutely wonderful, and I learned so much. Of course, after two hours of walking we only got through the tiniest fraction of Bologna's incredibly long and storied history.

Some highlights...

Porticoes: Bologna was the first European city to free slaves. When this happened, the city was overrun by former slaves. To accommodate them, the current residents added rooms to the facades of their homes and columns underneath to support the new structure above. The porticoes became such a hallmark of the city that it was actually illegal to build anything new without a portico until the 18th century.

St. Stephen's Church: This is actually a collection of connected churches. There used to be seven, but only four remain. The newest is from the 15th century. The oldest is from Roman times, though the floor, the tour guide mentioned, was much newer. It was replaced in the 12th century. Charlemagne visited the church to move the relics of two very early Christian martyrs. I have walked in Charlemagne's footsteps!

University: When the University of Bologna first began, students were taught in the homes of their professors. The Pope didn't like this, so he had a palace built to be used as the university. There is an anatomy theater inside that dates from the 14th century. I saw the table on which they laid the cadavers and the pulpit from which the professor taught. He didn't actually touch the body, he directed his assistants to perform the cutting. When Napoleon arrived in Bologna, he had another campus built for the university, and it is this one that is still used today.

Roads: Many of the main streets in the city center were built by the Romans, and they go to quite distant places. For example, one that runs through the location of an medieval fish market goes all the way from the Adriatic Sea to Milan. To this day, it is very heavily trafficked. I know, because trying to cross it was harrowing!

What struck me most about the city was how functional the old buildings and streets are, and how accustomed the locals are to it. There's a McDonald's in a building from the 12th century and no one blinks an eye at it. I visited my friends' apartment, which has an amazing view of an enormous church, and I asked how old it was. No one knew, but they guessed five or six hundred years and shrugged. Everything is old in Italy, they said. I used to think America had old things too, but Italy is redefining the word for me.