Hi there,
I keep telling you about the two weeks we spent in Italy in August.
One Saturday we went from Verona to Bologna to spend the day. We caught the train before 7 in the morning.
The city is a bit ugly, especially if you compare it with cities like Trieste and Verona. All the buildings are reddish in color, and it has a medieval feel to it, just like Siena (although Siena is much prettier).
We noticed from the first moment that there were a lot of people asking for money everywhere. We even saw a group of people fighting in a square.
As soon as we arrived, we bought the ticket to go up to the Torre Degli Asinelli. It is the only tower that can be visited now in the city. Also, keep in mind that after the covid, to enter most places you must make the reservation online and everything is by quota. The entrance costs 5 euros per person.
The tower is tall (498 steps), but the top has bars and is small, so I didn’t enjoy it as much as the Lucca towers. Also, they only let us stay 15 minutes upstairs.
We toured Bologna and by noon it was oppressively hot.
For lunch we found a healthy fast-food place called Galleria Portici where there was a menu for 12 euros in which they gave you a plate of pasta, a salad, unlimited water and a coffee. It was good and I drank two pitchers of sparkling water. The restaurant also has a terrace with a great view of the towers, but in that heat, you had to eat inside.
There is also a window called Finestrella di Via Piella that appears in the guides and in Atlas Obscura as if it were something special and it is nothing more than a hole in a wall to see towards a river. I found it so ugly that I didn’t even take a photo.
Before visiting Bologna, I came across an article in Atlas Obscura that says that between the 12th and 13th century around 100 towers were built in the city of which only 22 have survived. One of the explanations for the construction of so many towers is that the rich families used them as a symbol of wealth and power, and to protect their territory. The last towers were demolished at the beginning of the 20th century.
As the last stop before catching the return train we went to Giardini Margherita. It is a huge park where there were people picnicking and sunbathing.
Here is the link to my YouTube channel: