Porticoes, towers and a serious kitchen

Bologna has three nicknames and earns each of them: la dotta, the learned, for a university founded in 1088; la grassa, the fat, for its cooking; la rossa, the red, for the brick and terracotta that colour every street. It is a working city rather than a museum, with students filling the squares until late and a centre that is still almost entirely medieval in plan.

What sets it apart is the portico. Some 62 kilometres of covered walkways run through the city, around 40 of them in the historic centre, so you can cross Bologna in the rain without opening an umbrella. They joined the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2021. The longest climbs 3.8 kilometres and 666 arches from Porta Saragozza to the hilltop sanctuary of San Luca.

Then there is the food. Tagliatelle with ragù, tortellini served in broth, mortadella sliced thin and green lasagne are all local, and none of them much resembles what travels abroad under the city’s name. The narrow lanes of the Quadrilatero, just east of Piazza Maggiore, have been a market since the Middle Ages and are the right place to begin.