Bologna in 3 days: the gastronomic capital of Europe where Bolognese ragù must be served on tagliatelle (the pasta measured to 1/12,270th of the Asinelli Tower height), where the oldest university in the world opened in 1088, and where 666 arches cover 3.8km of uphill walkway to a baroque hilltop shrine.
The unfinished Gothic church (the Pope stopped it from exceeding St Peter's by restricting the funding): still the 5th largest church in the world at half its intended size. Neptune's trident fountain (1566) in the adjacent square.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe tower that set the official pasta width: tagliatelle must be 1/12,270th of the Asinelli height = 8mm cooked. The 498 steps give the finest view of Bologna's red porticoes and terracotta roofscape.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideTrading in the same four streets since the 13th century: the sfogline (the women who roll tagliatelle by hand), the DOP mortadella studded with pistachio, the 36-month Parmigiano-Reggiano wheels and the fresh pescherie.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe 1982 Chamber of Commerce recipe: coarse beef chuck, pancetta, white wine, whole milk (to mellow) and barely any tomato, slow-cooked 6 hours. On tagliatelle. Spaghetti Bolognese does not exist in Bologna.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe most macabre academic room in Europe: the two carved wooden "Spellati" (flayed figures) flanking the professor's chair, the amphitheatre seating for the audience of anatomy students watching dissections on the central marble table.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe innkeeper who saw Venus through a keyhole and modeled pasta on her navel: the tortellino (pork loin, prosciutto, mortadella, Parmigiano) in the clear crystal capon broth. The most important Italian pasta dish by cultural weight.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideBuilt 1674–1793 to carry the rain-threatened Madonna icon between the hilltop shrine and the city: 666 arches (the number is coincidental), 3.8km uphill to the baroque oval church with the finest Bologna panorama.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideGiorgio Morandi's meditative bottle still-lives (1890–1964, the most profound Italian painter of the 20th century) in the former city abattoir converted to a museum in 2007. The Transavanguardia and Arte Programmata of the Bolognese avant-garde.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuide45 min by train: the Enzo Ferrari Museum on his birthplace street, and the traditional balsamic (cooked Trebbiano must, aged 12–25 years through progressively smaller barrels of chestnut, cherry, juniper, mulberry and oak) at the city's acetaie.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe finest salumeria in the Quadrilatero: the DOP Bologna province mortadella (myrtle berry and pistachio, very different from American "bologna") in a warm, thick, toasted tigella flatbread. The defining €4 street food of the gastronomic capital of Europe.
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