Elevated view of old town, Bologna, Italy

©Damien Tachoires/500px

Bologna

Fusing haughty elegance with down-to-earth grit in one beautifully colonnaded medieval grid, Bologna is a city of two intriguing halves. One side is a hard-working, high-tech city located in the super-rich Po valley where suave opera-goers waltz out of regal theatres and into some of the nation's finest restaurants. The other is a bolshie, politically edgy city that hosts the world's oldest university and is famous for its graffiti-embellished piazzas filled with mildly inebriated students swapping Gothic fashion tips.


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Portrait of a young female student dressed casually in the famous arched galleries in Bologna city in Italy. Bologna is student city and home to the oldest university in the world
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The Lonely Planet guide to Bologna

Dec 4, 2023 • 6 min read

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