One Day in Bologna: The Wise, Fat, Red and Towered City (Part 1)

I enjoyed one day in Bologna even though my stay in this city was longer. This was not my first time here. I already visited Bologna back in 2017, and honestly, a lot has not changed. The same red tones, the same porticoes, the same heavy food temptation around every corner 🤤 . Still, every time I come back, the city manages to surprise me with something new.

This day in Bologna started early in the morning, because I joined a special guided tour inside the Archiginnasio, the former main seat of the University of Bologna. And if Bologna is famous for one thing besides food, it is definitely its university. Founded in 1088, the University of Bologna is widely considered the oldest university in the Western world still in operation. So yes, I basically started my cultural day by walking into almost 1,000 years of academic ego, ambition, and dust. Respectfully, of course. 😉

Starting the Day at the Archiginnasio

The Archiginnasio was built in the 16th century to finally gather the scattered university schools into 1 impressive building. Today, it houses the Municipal Library and the famous Anatomical Theatre, but back then, this was the place where knowledge had status, money, coats of arms, and probably a lot of male confidence walking around in long robes.

The first thing that struck me was the courtyard and corridors covered with thousands of coats of arms. Around 6,000 of them decorate the walls and ceilings, belonging to students and professors from different regions, families, and places that sometimes do not even exist anymore. I saw names and symbols connected to old kingdoms and territories like Aragon, and it made me think how international Bologna already was centuries ago.

Of course, when we say “international students,” we should not imagine backpackers with Erasmus budgets and tote bags. Back then, studying in Bologna meant you needed money, status, or at least a family that could afford to send you away to study. Most students were men, many came from privileged families, and education was not exactly an open-door policy for everyone.

The university was especially famous for law. From what I understood during the tour, there were different paths of study, including law and the so-called arts, which did not mean painting cute landscapes. “Arts” could include subjects connected to medicine, philosophy, astronomy, and other serious fields. So basically, Bologna was where people came if they wanted to argue professionally, heal bodies, read Latin, and maybe become important enough to have their family symbol painted on a wall.

The Chapel, the Hall, and the Feeling of Old Dusty Knowledge

During the tour, we also visited spaces that are usually not casually open to everyone, including the Chapel of Santa Maria dei Bulgari and the Stabat Mater Hall. The chapel’s name comes from an older church connected to the area near the houses of Bulgaro, a famous 12th-century jurist. The Stabat Mater Hall later became one of the important historical rooms of the Archiginnasio.

I will be honest, at some points I was trying to listen, look, absorb, take pictures in my head, and still understand where exactly I was standing. That is Bologna for you. You enter “just a university building,” and 5 minutes later your brain is handling law, medicine, religion, coats of arms, Latin, and ancient books behind bars.

The library rooms felt immense. Rows of old books, protected shelves, and that heavy silence of places where knowledge has been stored for centuries. I always wonder in places like this: how much of that knowledge still makes sense today, and how much of it would make modern scientists politely scream?

The Anatomical Theatre: The Dead Body Exposition

Eventually we made it to the famous Anatomical Theatre.

I had already seen an anatomical theatre in Padua, so this instantly connected with my previous trip. The one in Padua felt more squeezed, vertical, and almost claustrophobic. Bologna’s theatre felt more open and theatrical, almost like a small wooden stage where medicine, curiosity, and death met in public.

The Anatomical Theatre in Bologna was built in 1637 for anatomy lessons. The room has a central marble table where dissections took place, benches for students, and a professor’s chair where the lecturer would explain what was happening while someone else did the actual cutting.

I sat there and tried to imagine myself as a student in the 17th century, watching a body being opened in front of me and not on YouTube or a biology textbook. Right there, in real life. Probably cold, probably dark outside, probably smelling very different from today’s museum version.

Around the room, statues of famous physicians watch over the space. You see figures like Hippocrates and Galen, the old medical names that still echo through history. Hippocrates is linked to the medical tradition behind the famous “first, do no harm” idea, although the exact phrase is more complicated historically than our modern version.

One statue caught my attention more than the others: Gaspare Tagliacozzi holding a nose in his hand. Somehow I had to think of Mike Tyson, a boxer, when he bit an ear during one of his boxing matches.

Tagliacozzi was a 16th-century Bolognese surgeon and one of the pioneers of reconstructive and plastic surgery. His work included facial reconstruction, especially noses, using tissue from the arm. This mattered because noses could be damaged by injury, punishment, or diseases such as syphilis, which became a major European problem after the late 15th century. So yes, long before modern Instagram rhinoplasty, Bologna already had a man figuring out how to rebuild faces.

The Darker Side of Learning

The tour also touched on the darker side of anatomy. Bodies used for dissection often came from people society did not protect and according to some local legends "didn't have a soul": executed criminals, the poor, the unclaimed, and, according to some local stories, women from the margins of society, including prostitutes. Science moved forward, but often through bodies of people who had the least power.

And just opposite the old university area, there was also a brothel, according to the tour. Which honestly fits Bologna’s personality too well. Knowledge on one side of the street, pleasure and gossip on the other. That testosterone had to be discharged somewhere, right? 😏

Student Life in Medieval Bologna: Porticoes and the Housing Hack

After the university, I kept walking under Bologna’s famous porticoes. If you have never been here, imagine endless covered walkways with arches, columns, shops underneath, apartments above, and a feeling that the city is protecting you from rain, sun, and maybe your own bad decisions.

Bologna has over 62 km of porticoes, and they became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021. They started growing in the Middle Ages, partly because the city needed more space. The university attracted people, the population grew, and owners expanded upper floors outward over the street, supported by beams and later columns. Underneath, pedestrians and shops got shelter. Above, people got extra rooms. Honestly, a very efficient medieval “we need more space but do not want to buy more land” solution.

I remember seeing similar structures in Treviso, and someone once told me, “Bologna started, others copied.” Historically, porticoes existed elsewhere too, so I would not say Bologna invented the whole idea for everyone. But Bologna definitely made porticoes its personality.

So why Bologna get her nickname The Wise, The Fat, The Red and The Towered? If you want to find out the reason, stay tuned and keep reading the Part 2 of my journey... 😜