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 Bologna had towers 8 centuries before Manhattan! 
The Prendiparte Tower Association's Headquarters ( Visit the Tower) |
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Wherever you are, Bologna is worth a trip. Wherever you're bound, Bologna is worth a detour.
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Bologna
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For most people Italy is Venice, Florence, and Rome. In Rome you can revive the splendor of the Roman Empire, in Venice and Florence you can admire the beauty of Italian Renaissance. But if you miss Bologna you'll miss the splendor of the late Italian Middle Age, which gave rise to Italian Renaissance. Bologna is the most beautiful open air Middle Age Museum one can imagine. In fact Bologna is the largest middle age town in Europe preserved to our days. You can stroll along its streets, protected from weather by its over 20 miles of centuries old arcades, and just look around, to discover that each building is a treasury for you to discover, be it a palace, a church or a small dwelling home or an artisan shop of the old Ghetto (the jewish district). You may buy groceries in a middle age style shop, you may have a snack and a glass of wine in an "Osteria", i.e. in a middle age style pub, or you may sit in a café under the arcades of the palace built to keep prisoner King Enzo, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Shopping in Bologna is an experience you can't miss. Being a rich town, in a very wealthy area, his shops can provide any luxury item you can dream of, but where else in the world you may enter a shop and get as an extra bonus the view of a Roman Theatre, or of the columns and fresco's of a Renaissance palace? If you love art, just step into any church and watch at the paintings and sculptures, or visit at least the Middle Age Museum, and the National Art Gallery (the Pinacoteca), where you can see masterworks of painters from middle age to baroque, mainly collected by Pope Benedict XIV (he was from Bologna) who chose to gather in an appropriate Gallery the most valuable paintings to preserve them better than it could be done in a church. If you love music, then you're in the music and Bel Canto homeland. Not only you can admire the Baroque Opera House, and, in season, enjoy an opera or a concert given in the same hall where premières of Mozart or Rossini's operas were performed (not to speak of Verdi or Wagner, of course), but you can plunge yourself in the Bologna musical history. You can see the very place where Mozart performed when he came to graduate at the highest music school of the time: the Bologna Music Academy, and look at the manuscripts of his exams, with the fatherly corrections of the Academy Dean of the time. Not only you can see Rossini's residence in town, or what's left of his countryside villa where he lived with his wife Isabella Colbran (a celebrated soprano of the time), you may have the chance to hear the piano pieces by Rossini, performed on the same piano he used to compose his music. Or in one of the many Opera fan clubs in the surroundings, you may hear the voices which will become the stars of tomorrow, under the teaching of the opera stars of the recent past. And, to add pleasure to pleasure, you may enjoy a Rossini's meal, accompanied by Rossini's music. Not everyone knows that if Rossini hadn't been the musical genius he was, he would have become world famous nonetheless as a master of cuisine arts. His recipes are a must for any high level restaurant. (To be
continued....)
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Bologna is also:
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