Bologna Porticoes Walk: Piazza Maggiore, the Two Towers and San Luca

The Garisenda was fenced off in October 2023 after monitoring showed its base deteriorating, and the Asinelli has been shut to visitors ever since as a direct consequence of the works around its neighbour. Consolidation and restoration are scheduled to run for years, with an earlier reopening of the Asinelli discussed but not promised. Treat the Two Towers as something you stand under in Piazza di Porta Ravegnana and look up at, and check the city’s current position before assuming the 498 steps are on the table.

Under the Voltone del Podestà — the vaulted crossing beneath Palazzo del Podestà, off Piazza Maggiore — stand two people at diagonally opposite corners, each facing into the stone rather than at each other. A whisper travels up and along the vault and arrives clearly at the far corner while staying inaudible to everyone standing in the middle. It costs nothing, it works every time, and it is the thing children remember about Bologna.

Bologna was once threaded with working canals, and they were built over rather than filled in. On Via Piella, a short walk from the university quarter, a small shuttered window in a plain wall opens straight onto the Canale delle Moline running between the backs of the houses. It is the one place the buried water system is visible from the street, and it is why locals call that corner the little Venice.

Tens of kilometres of covered arcade run through the centre, UNESCO-listed since 2021, and you can cross most of the old town in a downpour without opening an umbrella. The porticoes were built so that the medieval city could add upper floors over the street, and they still do the same job for walkers — which is why a wet forecast is a reason to reshuffle a Bologna day rather than cancel it.

Spaghetti bolognese is not a Bolognese dish. The ragù belongs on tagliatelle, and the two plates locals will argue with you about are tortellini in brodo — served in broth, not sauce — and lasagne verdi. Buy the raw material a few streets away in the Quadrilatero, the tight grid of lanes off Piazza Maggiore that has been the city’s market since Roman times, rather than eating on the square itself.

Osteria del Sole, hidden in Vicolo Ranocchi between Via Orefici and Via Pescherie Vecchie, has been pouring wine since 1465 and has never had a kitchen. The custom is to buy mortadella, cheese and bread from the Quadrilatero shops a few doors away, carry it in, and order only the drink. Communal wooden tables, a sign outside that says nothing but ‘Vini’, and the single most Bolognese hour available to a visitor.

The historic core is a limited-traffic zone enforced by camera through the day, every day, and on T-days the central streets close to traffic outright. You do not need a car: Bologna Centrale is a high-speed hub roughly 40 minutes from Florence and an hour from Milan, and the Marconi Express monorail runs from the airport to the station in a few minutes. Arriving without a car is genuinely easier here than parking one.

The portico from Porta Saragozza to the hilltop sanctuary runs roughly four kilometres uphill, famously counted at 666 arches (the number depends on how you count them) and covered the whole way. It is still an hour or so of steady climbing each way and it gets hot under the roof in summer. Treat it as a separate half-day: go early, or ride the tourist road-train up and walk down under the arches at your own pace.