Arrivederci Bologna

A few pics from our final day in Bologna where we had coffee and pastries at the customery time of 11:00 am, ate everything left in the fridge for lunch, listened to a band doing a good rendition of AC/DC's All Night Long, took a tour of the towers, drank bellinis and ate snacks before packing our bags for tomorrow's flight to Copenhagen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This and That

In choosing the location of our holiday, we usually check whether it's easy to get to other locations from there!  We decided on Bologna this time because it has good rail connections to other towns and we chose the particular apartment we're staying in, because it's a quick and easy walk to the train station.  What did we do before the Internet?  We relied on travel agents to do the best they could for us and we trusted we wouldn't arrive at accommodation that turned out to be an empty parking lot behind a crack house.

Aside from making interesting tours and excursions while here, we've taken some little day trips: the first was to Pisa, as we've written about, then Padua, which is a place we've visited (and loved) on a previous trip.  We stayed there for a month a few years ago - the story of that month is elsewhere on this blog and can be easily found.  When we went there a few days ago we found that nothing had changed and it is still a beautiful town with a great deal to offer the tourist.  Probably its greatest advantage is that it's only 25 minutes from Venice but has far fewer tourists and is much more relaxed.  

When we went to Modena last week on our foodie tour, we decided it was well-worth another visit, so we took a train trip there a couple of days ago.  There's plenty to see there, including a magnificent Duomo.  The photos below don't really do it justice, as is usual, because it's so massive and you can only photograph a small section at a time.  The church is on several levels - the lower level appears in the first panorama shot.  The columns are an unusual and beautiful feature.

While in Modena we also climbed the Ghirlandina Tower, a UNESCO World Heritage site.  The view from the top was very beautiful.

We had a very different experience today when we visited the Ustica Memorium here in Bologna.  On 27 June 1980 an Italian DC9 passenger plane left Bologna airport bound for Palermo, but crashed into the sea near Ustica Island, killing all 81 people on board.  No cause for the crash has ever been found, although there have been decades of investigations, court cases, theories and accusations.  The wreckage has been re-composed around a metal scaffold inside a purpose-built hangar in Bologna and it's eerily fascinating to visit.  Around the interior of the hangar, where visitors can walk, are 81 black mirrors with speakers behind them - while walking around, you can hear whispered voices, simulating the conversations of the people on board, looking forward to their summer beach holiday in Palermo and making plans for their activities while there.  Hanging throughout the building are 81 lightbulbs which continuously dim and brighten, to simulate the beating hearts of the victims and the families they left behind.  Nine large black boxes contain the personal belongings recovered - shoes, flippers, snorkels, clothes and so on.  There is also a separate video room where you can hear news reports and accounts relating to the crash and discover further information about the investigations.  All in all it was a fascinating visit and a bit off the beaten track of most tourists to Bologna, a fact which has great appeal to us.

[Photo credit: www.bolognawelcome.com]

Also today we visited the Palazzo d'Accursio here in Bologna - in the 12th-13th century it was the residence of the Accursio family but is now the seat of the city government and houses several important city meeting halls, a beautiful chapel, art gallery and ceremonial rooms.

Following are some photos of Bolognese. 😋

And an early morning photo of a section of the magnificent Basilica of San Petronio - sans tourists.  This basilica houses the largest sundial in the world.  It's embedded in the floor of the church and designed using such a brilliant feat of engineering (or astronomy, rather) that a fine sunbeam shines through a tiny hole in the ceiling precisely onto the line of the sundial at midday each day.

A Pilgrimage Through the Porticoes

The most noteworthy architectural feature of Bologna is the almost 40 kilometres of porticoes - these covered walkways are attached to buildings from one end of the city to the other. 

The granddaddy of all porticoes is the 4km continuous one that connects the old city to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, at the top of a nearby hill.  Built over a period of some 120 years (1674-1793), it was supposedly built as an act of faith to shelter pilgrims making the journey to the church.

The mere mortals of today make the journey in relative comfort compared with the original churchgoers of San Luca, with some even taking the bus to the halfway point. The bus was not for us...we trudged like pilgrims to the top of the hill and spent some time admiring the Sanctuary whilst the priest was conducting a service for some local school children. Truth be told, we were just catching our breath. The walk follows a steady and arduous track uphill - we took over an hour to arrive at the peak. 

Coming down was much faster, even including the stop for coffee and pastries (as we do)! 

Visiting the Deceased

Some would say that we have something of an obsession with going to cemeteries when we travel, and that's not far from the truth.  We've been to cemeteries all over Europe.  Mind you, we've also been to fruit and vegetable markets everywhere, but that's a whole other interest - we really do like food.  We like looking at it, we like sniffing it and we like eating it (clearly....). 

Cemeteries are interesting even when you don't know anyone buried there.  Indeed, that's probably when they're most interesting, because you don't have any emotion attached to the visit.  They're very "orderly", too, and we are both big fans of things being just so.  

Before we travel, we do a fair bit of research, because we don't like to arrive in a place and waste time.  Oh, sometimes we like to spend part of a day sitting in a cafe or bar, watching people go by, but we always try to do one thing each day that's a bit interesting.  Consequently, before we travel, we look up where there are towers (for photo opportunities), where there are markets (same, same) and where there are old libraries (I really do like to look at books, even when I'm not reading them.  I like the smell of lots of books collected in one place. Odd?  Maybe.) We also always check where the nearest cemetery is, to the place we are visiting.

The Certosa di Bologna cemetery is the most beautiful cemetery we've ever visited.  Established in 1801 on the grounds of a former monastery, the building of which began in 1334, it is obviously historically significant, but even setting that aside for a moment, this is an absolutely magnificent resting place by any standards.  Now it's time for our photographs to speak for themselves.

There are kilometres of covered walkways (porticos) throughout the cemetery - there are burial sites in the walls and under the floor of these walkways.

Just one of the roads lined with graves, within the cemetery.  There are hundreds of hectares of these roads.

This huge area is just the "upstairs" - there is a whole separate floor of burial sites underground. The area of just this single building with separate levels covers probably one hundred hectares.

Family mausoleum covered in gold leaf

One mausoleum.

There are literally hundreds of separate family mausoleums.

 Chapel within the cemetery.

Bologna Night Life

Bologna puts on a new face at night, and the following photos give some indication of just how lovely it is to be here.