Bologna's twin beating hearts. Piazza Maggiore is one of Italy's grandest medieval squares, framed by the unfinished façade of San Petronio and the imposing Palazzo d'Accursio. Next door, Piazza del Nettuno is home to the city's most mischievous masterpiece — Giambologna's 16th-century Neptune Fountain, where the sculptor outwitted the Church with a particularly well-endowed god of the sea. Local legend holds that rubbing Neptune's thumb before an exam brings good luck.

The fifth-largest church in the world and the largest ever built with private funds, San Petronio was intended to dwarf St Peter's in Rome — until the Pope intervened. Step inside to find Cassini's famous meridian line embedded in the floor, a 17th-century sundial so precise it was used to reform the Western calendar. The unfinished marble-and-brick façade tells a story of ambition, politics, and divine power plays that gripped Bologna for centuries.

Bologna once bristled with over 180 medieval towers — symbols of family wealth and power in a city where height meant prestige. Today only about 20 remain, and the most iconic are Asinelli (97 m, 498 steps) and the leaning Garisenda (48 m), the pair that inspired a line in Dante's Inferno. Climb Asinelli for a breathtaking rooftop panorama over the red city and the Apennine hills beyond. Local lore says dropping a coin from the Garisenda brings luck — though we'd advise keeping your coins for gelato.

The original seat of the University of Bologna — the oldest university in the Western world, founded in 1088 — the Archiginnasio is a treasure of Renaissance scholarship. Its walls and ceilings are covered in over 6,000 coats of arms of former students, a roll-call of Europe's intellectual elite. Inside is the extraordinary Teatro Anatomico, a cedar-wood anatomy theatre where 17th-century medical students watched dissections performed on a marble slab beneath a carved canopy of carved figures — human anatomy as theatre, science as spectacle.

Founded in 1088, the University of Bologna is the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Walk the porticoed streets of the university quarter, where students have argued philosophy, law, and medicine for nearly a thousand years. The Palazzo Poggi now houses fascinating science museums — from wax anatomical models to antique globes and early electrical instruments — showcasing how Bologna was the beating heart of European intellectual life during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Few places on earth offer a more intoxicating sensory overload than Bologna's Quadrilatero, the medieval grid of narrow streets between Piazza Maggiore and Via Rizzoli. This is where the city's food identity lives and breathes: butchers hang plump mortadella beside wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano, pasta makers roll ribbons of fresh tagliatelle, and salumerias overflow with cured meats and aged balsamic vinegar. This isn't a tourist market — it's where Bolognese families have shopped for centuries.

Bologna's reinvented covered market sits at the crossroads of the old city. Once a medieval market, Mercato di Mezzo has been beautifully restored into a multi-level food hall celebrating the best of Emilian gastronomy. Join locals and students for aperitivo with a spritz, sample locally made crescentine (fried flatbreads) stuffed with mortadella, or simply absorb the convivial atmosphere that makes Bologna one of Italy's most liveable cities. This is where the phrase "eating like a Bolognese" was invented.

Locals call it "Sette Chiese" — Seven Churches — though today only four remain of the original complex said to replicate the holy sites of Jerusalem. The Santo Stefano complex is Bologna's most atmospheric corner: a labyrinth of interconnected Romanesque churches, cloisters, and courtyards dating back to the 5th century, built atop earlier pagan temples. The cobbled piazza outside is one of the city's most beautiful, ringed by medieval palaces and the gentle sound of running water from an ancient well.

Few visitors know that Bologna was once threaded with canals, built to power the city's silk and wool industries in the Middle Ages. Most were covered over in the 20th century, but one magical spot remains: the Finestra sul Canale, a wooden window cut into a wall on Via Piella that frames a view of a photogenic canal and mill building beneath. Arrive early morning when the light is soft and the canal reflects the medieval buildings above — one of Italy's most underrated secret views, known only to those in the know.

Bologna's 40 km of covered porticoes are unlike anything else in Italy — a city within a city, where you can walk for hours in shade and shelter regardless of weather. In 2021 they were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The longest and most dramatic is the Portico di San Luca: 3.8 km and 666 arches climbing the hillside to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca. Beloved by Bologna's Sunday walkers, this pilgrimage route is the city's spiritual and physical escape — a tradition maintained since the 14th century.

Dominating the western side of Piazza Maggiore, the Palazzo d'Accursio has been Bologna's seat of civic power since 1336. Its imposing brick façade is punctured by a bronze statue of Pope Gregory XIII (the man who gave us the Gregorian calendar — a Bolognese by birth), and a gilded Madonna by Jacopo della Quercia. Inside, the civic museums include the extraordinary Collezioni Comunali d'Arte, an art collection spanning from the medieval period through the Baroque, displayed in the opulent salons of the former papal residence.

Bologna's grandest boulevard, Via Indipendenza, was carved through the medieval city in the 19th century in classic post-Risorgimento style — wide, porticoed, and lined with cafés where students and professionals have debated politics for generations. It leads north to Parco della Montagnola, a French-style garden commissioned by Napoleon above the site of the former city walls. On Friday and Saturday mornings the park hosts Bologna's largest flea market, a chaotic and wonderful treasure hunt for antiques, vinyl, vintage clothing, and curiosities.

Bologna was once ringed by three successive circuits of walls, the last of which — the 14th-century wall with its distinctive brick gates — partially survives. Porta Galliera is the most significant: in 1848, a rebellion by the Bolognese forced the retreating Austrian army to leave through this gate, a pivotal moment in the Risorgimento that helped forge unified Italy. The story of Bologna's defiant civic spirit — from the medieval commune to the Resistance in World War II — runs like a thread through every stone in this city.

Bologna paid a terrible price in World War II — bombed by the Allies and brutally occupied by the Nazis, the city became a centre of the Italian Resistance. The sombre Monument to the Fallen Partisans in Piazza VIII Agosto bears the names of those who gave their lives for liberation. On 2 August each year, Bolognese also mourn the 1980 station bombing — the worst terrorist attack in Italian post-war history — which killed 85 people at the central station. Bologna carries these wounds with dignity and defiant civic pride.

Visible from almost everywhere in Bologna, the baroque dome of the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca crowns the hill of Guardia above the city. Connected to the city by the world's longest portico (666 arches, 3.8 km), the sanctuary has been a place of pilgrimage since the 12th century. Each year on Ascension Thursday, the icon of the Madonna is carried in solemn procession down through the portico to the city centre and back — a tradition unbroken for over 800 years. The views from the hilltop on a clear day extend across the Po Valley to the Alps.