Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

🇮🇹 Bologna is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy and is cosmopolitan with 150 different nationalities. It is known as the Fat, Red, and the Learn'd City due to its rich cuisine, red Spanish tiled rooftops, left-wing politics, and being home to the oldest university in the western world.

Originally Etruscan, the city has been one of the most important urban centres for centuries, first under the Etruscans (who called it Felsina), then under the Celts as Bona, later under the Romans (Bonōnia), then again in the Middle Ages, as a free municipality and signoria, when it was among the largest European cities by population. Famous for its towers, churches and lengthy porticoes, Bologna has a well-preserved historical centre, thanks to a careful restoration and conservation policy which began at the end of the 1970s. Home to the oldest university in the Western world, the University of Bologna, established in AD 1088, the city has a large student population that gives it a cosmopolitan character. In 2000 it was declared European capital of culture and in 2006, a UNESCO "City of Music" and became part of the Creative Cities Network. In 2021 UNESCO recognised the lengthy porticoes of the city as a World Heritage Site.

Bologna is an important agricultural, industrial, financial and transport hub, where many large mechanical, electronic and food companies have their headquarters as well as one of the largest permanent trade fairs in Europe. According to the most recent data gathered by the European Regional Economic Growth Index (E-REGI) of 2009, Bologna is the first Italian city and the 47th European city in terms of its economic growth rate. As a consequence, Bologna is also one of the wealthiest cities in Italy, often ranking as one of the top cities in terms of quality of life in the country; in 2020, it ranked 1st out of 107 Italian provinces.

Economy In terms of total GDP, the Metropolitan City of Bologna generated a value of about €35 billion ($40.6 billion) in 2017, equivalent to €34,251 ($40,165) per capita, the third highest figure among Italian provinces (after Milan and Bolzano/Bozen).

The economy of Bologna is characterised by a flourishing industrial sector, traditionally centered on the transformation of agricultural and zootechnical products (Eridania, Granarolo, Segafredo Zanetti, Conserve Italia), machinery (Coesia, IMA, Sacmi), construction equipment (Maccaferri); energy (Hera Group), automotive (Ducati, Lamborghini), footwear, textile, engineering, chemical, printing and publishing (Cappelli, il Mulino, Monrif Group, Zanichelli).

In particular, Bologna is considered the centre of the so-called "packaging valley", an area well known for its high concentration of firms specialised in the manufacturing of automatic packaging machines (COESIA, IMA). Furthermore, Bologna is well known for its dense network of co-operatives, a feature that dates back to the social struggles of farmers and workers in the 1800s and that today produces up to a third of its GDP and occupies 265 thousand people in the Emilia-Romagna region.

Transport Bologna is home to the Guglielmo Marconi International Airport, the seventh busiest Italian airport for passenger traffic (8 million passengers handled in 2017).

Bologna Centrale railway station is one of Italy's most important train hubs thanks to the city's strategic location as a crossroad between north–south and east–west routes. It serves 58 million passengers annually. The city hosts several minor railway stations.

Bologna San Donato classification yard, with 33 railway tracks, used to be the largest freight hub in Italy by size and traffic. Since 2018, it has been repurposed as the Bologna San Donato railway test circuit.

The city is also served by a large network of public bus lines, including trolley-bus lines, operated since 2012 by Trasporto Passeggeri Emilia-Romagna (TPER).

A large commuter rail service is currently under development, and a four line tram network is also planned.

Education The University of Bologna, conventionally said to have been founded in 1088 by glossators Irnerius and Pepo, is the oldest university in Europe. It was an important centre of European intellectual life during the Middle Ages, attracting scholars from Italy and throughout Europe. The Studium, as it was originally known, began as a loosely organized teaching system with each master collecting fees from students on an individual basis. The location of the early University was thus spread throughout the city, with various colleges being founded to support students of a specific nationality.

In the Napoleonic era, the headquarters of the university were moved to their present location on Via Zamboni, in the north-eastern sector of the city centre. Today, the university's 11 schools, 33 departments, and 93 libraries are spread across the city and include four subsidiary campuses in nearby Cesena, Forlì, Ravenna, and Rimini. Noteworthy students present at the university in centuries past included Dante, Petrarch, Thomas Becket, Pope Nicholas V, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Copernicus. Laura Bassi, appointed in 1732, became the first woman to officially teach at a university in Europe. In more recent history, Luigi Galvani, the discoverer of bioelectromagnetics, and Guglielmo Marconi, the pioneer of radio technology, also worked at the university. The University of Bologna remains one of the most respected and dynamic post-secondary educational institutions in Italy. To this day, Bologna is still very much a university town, with over 80,000 enrolled students in 2015. This community includes a great number of Erasmus, Socrates, and overseas students. The university's botanical garden, the Orto Botanico dell'Università di Bologna, was established in 1568; it is the fourth oldest in Europe.

Johns Hopkins University maintains its Bologna Center in the city, which hosts one of the overseas campuses of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). SAIS Bologna was founded in 1955 as the first campus of a US post-graduate school to open in Europe. It was inspired by Marshall Plan efforts to build a cultural bridge between America and Europe. Today, the Bologna Center also hosts the Associazione italo-americana "Luciano Finelli", which supports cross-cultural awareness and exchange between Italy and the United States.

Dickinson College, Indiana University, Brown University, and the University of California also have campuses or antennas in the city.

In addition, Bologna hosts a music school, Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, established in 1804, and an art school, Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, founded in 1802. Both institutions were born as part of the reforms introduced by Napoleon Bonaparte.