We had planned to stay in Bologna the longest stretch of our Italy tour, mostly because of its strong food reputation. So this was the last day of the stay. We wanted to capitalize by maxing out the Bologna Welcome cards that we'd bought the first day. We're talking maybe 10s of Euros saved at most, but it was a good exercise the min-max our time. Morning: history museum, 10 Euro value
Afternoon: go to San Luca lookout the see the whole city. 5 Euros
Evening: ride hop-on-hop-off bus to the train station and take shuttle bus to airport. 15 Euros
The history museum was a bit eclectic, but armed with the casual knowledge we'd accumulated in the past couple of days, the audio guide was quite simulating. Two exhibits stand out.
The first was a half room dedicated to i Torri, the towers of Bologna. From any given vantage point on the ground, you usually can't see many towers. Of course, far fewer still stand today. The fact that most of the time you're avoiding traffic by standing/walking under porticos means there's not good sightlines. And even when you are between buildings, they're built quite high, not skimping on ceiling height per story. But in serial shots and in various art from when the towers were in full bloom, the effect is at once astonishing and sobering.
The towers are a product of two eternal human traits: concentrating wealth and seeking glory. In a city packed with multistory houses, the only way to stand out is to go up. There is no better, more obvious gauge on your family wealth than how many stories you can put on a tower. And these things didn't spring up overnight. Workers and architects and engineers spent decades raising them. All for a chance to lord your wealth and power over the rest of the city. Bologna was once one of the most important cities in the world. And by that point, the two towers at the center of the city had already been a well known symbol of Bolognese prominence for centuries. Take these city models in close-ups from various Renaissance paintings:
The Asinelli and Garisenda towers were erected in the early 1100s. By the time Dante wrote about them, they were already over two centuries old, about the same time as between now and when the Founding Fathers declared independence. Imagine that. And the towers still stand today. I'm not sure the Asinellis who commissioned the tower could truly comprehend how well their vanity project has paid off.
Unlike the pyramids, which were built with slave labor, these towers were paid for. On one side of the coin, you could call this the highest achievement in capitalism. To accumulate unimaginable wealth and to acquit yourself of it for your own desires. On the other side, what else could that money have done? Would we still know and marvel at those alternate universe achievements? I should point out that of course there were contemporary rich families who performed plenty of philanthropy to go along with their more selfish pursuits. So much of Bologna's development, cultural and otherwise, is owed to the Bentivoglio family, who hardly shied away from a family portrait. The title alone should illustrate what they thought of themselves:
Madonna enthroned, and the Bentivoglio family
The other standout exhibit was simply a portrait of Mussolini, used in context in a room about WWII.
His eyes were jabbed out, with no explanation given in the art card or audio guide. The subtext I got was that everyone should understand why the painting was defaced, but I'd like to research that some more.
So that was morning. We headed to the last restaurant on our try list -- Oltre. This place was a bit too hipster, but the food certainly delivered.
I've been getting tagliatelle with ragu (in Bologna you don't have to say Bolognese -- bear with this running joke) at every meal to be able to comparison shop and get a sense for the range. As I understand it, ragu Bolognese shouldn't use much tomato, and that was true of every one I'd tried up till Oltre's, which had detectable tomato, and for the better, I must admit. It adds a heavy does of familiarity and childhood nostalgia to a dish that can be hard to get rich enough without being greasy. Oltre's is really good, but not better than Venissa's (though that was 'maccheroni' and not tagliatelle). Despite the tomato heresy, I give this 2nd place. Note: I didn't get a ragu at Polpette & Crescentine; I knew I'd be too full with the name dishes. It could have been a contender...
Muslimah got a... cod lasagna, and it was a great application of cod. Very aromatic and woke up the other ingredients.
Finally, I ordered pigeon, cooked like what I'd consider a classic French roast duck breast. The sauce was good; the meat was rare without negatively affecting texture, and the blueberry and raspberry accent worked. The homemade dab of pigeon liver pate really needed some bread, which wasn't provided. A really good dish, but I have no basis for thinking of it as Italian.
After lunch, we basically ran up a mountain. There is a covered portico path that runs from a city gate alllllll the way up to the Santuario della Beata Vergine di San Luca. 666 arches, about half of them running up at what I'd guess is an average 10% grade, what would be absolutely hellish on a touring bike. We were checked out of our BnB and had our full travel load in our backpacks, which made the climb a bit spicier. 289m of steps and maybe half an hour later, we had huffed and sweated our way to the landing of the basilica. We had to move fast because the afternoon was closing in. So we flashed our cards, ran up the spiral staircase to the top of the church, took a few pics, didn't even look for the icon that Saint Luke painted (the artifact of honor in the annual procession that goes down the path into down), and plopped into the express bus taking us back into town.
On the way, we consulted the time tables carefully and concluded that we could still intercept the hop-on-hop-off bus and ride it to the train station. Unfortunately, we waited at the around stop for 5min without the bus showing up, so just gave up on those sweet savings and marched up Via dell'Indipendenza north to the station. Some more navigating later, we arrived at our AirBnB in Palermo.
For more info on the Santuario:
