Bologna keeps its art under 38 km of UNESCO porticoes: Carracci altarpieces in a former Jesuit novitiate, seven stacked churches over a Roman temple, and Europe's oldest university turned museum. Three days inside La Dotta, the Learned One.
Emilia-Romagna's flagship collection fills a former Jesuit novitiate on Via delle Belle Arti: Giotto's polyptych, Raphael's Ecstasy of St Cecilia, and rooms of Carracci, Guido Reni and Guercino. Open Tue-Sun, closed Mondays.
Seven interlinked churches around two courtyards, layered over a Roman temple to Isis from the 5th century onward. The octagonal Santo Sepolcro holds Bologna's patron saint; the Cortile di Pilato basin is Lombard, 8th century.
The University of Bologna's 16th-century palace on Via Zamboni: Marsili's obstetric wax models, Aldrovandi's natural-history cabinet, naval architecture rooms, and Pellegrino Tibaldi's Odyssey frescoes upstairs.
The Arca di San Domenico is a relay race of sculptors: Nicola Pisano's reliefs, Niccolò dell'Arca's canopy, and three small figures carved by a twenty-year-old Michelangelo in 1494. Mozart studied counterpoint in the convent.
Bologna's contemporary museum occupies the Forno del Pane, the 1915 municipal bakery in the Manifattura delle Arti. The permanent Museo Morandi wing holds the largest collection of the painter's quiet bottle still lifes.
One of the world's great film archives: the Biblioteca Renzo Renzi reading rooms, the Sala Cervi screening hall, and L'Immagine Ritrovata, the restoration lab that rescues prints for Scorsese's Film Foundation.
Antonio Galli Bibiena designed this bell-shaped hall in 1763, the first Italian opera house built with public money. Wagner's Lohengrin had its Italian premiere here in 1871. Guided tours run when restoration work allows.
A vaulted cellar under Palazzo Bentivoglio on Via Mascarella, running live jazz nearly every night since 1987 — trios, big bands and Emilian standards, with a wine list of 500 labels and tortellini served past midnight.
Renaissance palace built over Roman walls, holding the carved tombs of medieval law professors shown mid-lecture, Manno Bandini's bronze Boniface VIII, Islamic ivories and a hall of parade armour.
A wooden shutter in a wall opens onto the Canale delle Moline, the last visible stretch of the canal network that once powered Bologna's silk mills and made it a medieval industrial capital before being paved over.
666 arches climb 3.8 km from Porta Saragozza to the hilltop sanctuary — the longest portico on earth, funded arch by arch by guilds and families from 1674. The Byzantine Madonna inside is carried into the city each May.
Bologna's stubbornly leftist osteria street, a run of small wine bars, bookshops and social clubs west of the centre. Aperitivo spills onto the cobbles from 18:00; on 25 April the whole street becomes a Liberation Day party.