Bologna is the city of tortellini? Tortellini of this, very special and cute, shape. Reminded me of a little face in a kerchief:

Bologna is also a land of mortadella, the famous pasta meat sauce that they call “ragú” (in the US we call it the Bolognese sauce), and porticos.

We had five nights in Bologna, with a planned visit to Modena (think famous vinegar), and a surprise, rather impromptu, visit to Florence! That one was NOT planned.

*as per usual, I will not relay every single moment, rather, I’ll stick to impressions and observations, about the city and about us 🙂

1 THE PORTICOS. It’s hard to explain, but the porticos are Bologna’s essence. They are everywhere. Think of arches with columns that connect streets with buildings. A buffer, of sorts. When we were walking, we were mainly walking under these arches. We got caught in a thunderstorm and it was fabulous – we did not get wet. What I also liked is that all the porticoes are different. Some are more traditional, others are more modern yet don’t spoil the feel of the city.

2 GRAFFITI. Unfortunately, Bologna had a lot of graffiti and that sometimes took away from the experience. I tried to not photograph it unless it was clever or special.

3 COLORS. Is someone were ask me : what color is Bologna? I’d say yellow, brick red, orange, and brown. It is a beautiful combination of the above colors.

4 SHOPPING: is fabulous. Jewelry, shoes, cosmetics. I purchased some skin care and makeup from Kiki Milano. My first lipstick ever was from Kiki Milano at 15!

5 Bologna is not very crowded which I loved.

6 Bologna is surprisingly compact! We visited the three parks, with playgrounds in our downtime. We walked everywhere.

7 We visited Bologna National Art Gallery one morning and enjoyed local art. I find being surrounded by art so soothing. Even if I don’t understand some of it. This cute puppy is a fragment of one of the paintings we saw at the gallery.

8 We saw Frida Kahlo photography exhibit one afternoon. I feel lucky that our visit coincided with this exhibit. In essence, the exhibit contained around 70 photographs of Frida (who herself was interested in photography because of her father). All the photographs were divided into sections and were authored by different photographers. Among them, photographs by Nikolas Muray, Imogene Cunningham, Lola Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, Julien Levy. Interestingly, Frida had a different relationship with each photographer, ranging from the most intimate relationship to friendship to purely work relationship. And the photographs reflect those relationships.

9 We went to the local library! Many government buildings in Bologna have this strange (to me) open door policy where you just go in. Whether you have official business or no, you are welcome to enter. No one asked us for the library card. We went to the library twice and stayed for a while. The library had sections for many languages including Asian and European.

10 Bologna city hall in the main square had its doors open and you could see the historical building from the inside, free of change and no questions asked.

11 I was in awe of the University of Bologna. It was established in 1088 (!!!)- it’s the oldest still operating university in the western world. Also an open door policy.

Lastly, our impromptu day trip to Florence!

Bologna is 37 minutes away from Florence by a high-speed Frecciarossa train.

My priority for Florence was the Uffici gallery since I wanted to see the grand masters of the Renaissance. I asked ChatGPT to help me create a focused itinerary for two hours. We saw works by Giotto, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rafael, Botticelli, Titian and Caravaggio. A highlight was a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi “Judith Slaying Holofernes”

Other paintings were impressive as well…

And, Caravaggio’s “Medusa”

We spent a few hours at the Uffici gallery and truly was worth the trip to Florence. My children behaved okay since I drilled into them that it’s an important museum. They also enjoyed seeing plentiful naked bodies, both male and female; those bodies being represented in painting and sculpture. To quote my 6 year old son … “lots of butt cheeks everywhere”.

The rest of our day in Florence was hard. After the gallery we had lunch, circled the Duomo, and visited an old perfumery.

Our return train tickets back to Bologna were for 6pm, but we came back at 2pm. Florence was PACKED and very touristy. I’m glad we did not stay in Florence but chose Bologna as our base.

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After Bologna we headed to a small town called Cervia on the Adriatic Sea. But I’ll save that for another post!