Have History, Will Travel

Cities are life. The good, the bad, and the beautiful—you can find it all inside a city. Let me tell you about a city that holds so much life that it bursts from its red roofs and graffiti-covered walls. Bologna, Italy knows life. It isn’t a tourist destination. You don’t come to Bologna to take posed photos in front of world-renowned landmarks. Bologna is a place for working, eating, laughing, drinking, loving, and living. It is home to the first university in the world. It is the culinary capital of a country that is the culinary capital. Bologna, simply put, is a trailblazer. Every city breathes, but Bologna does it with style. Its lungs are its 'portas,' allowing cars and pedestrians to flow in and out of the medieval walls that surround it. Its people are its blood, rushing down Via Indipendenza—its carotid artery—and trickling out to the side streets, its appendages and extremities. Bologna is proud. It stands tall and erect, like the 'due torre'—its unfailing spinal column at its center. And its beating heart is Piazza Maggiore, the main square first established in the 15th Century. The Piazza has borne witness to Communist marches, bicycle auctions, chocolate festivals, New Years fireworks, rock concerts, Papal processions, violence, and 'amore'—it has borne witness to life for nearly six hundred years. Like every city—like every human—it has its scars. But its scars show its history, courage, failures and resilience. Scars and all, it still stands. And it is all the more beautiful for it. When I first arrived in Bologna I was wary. I didn’t truly see Bologna when I arrived, and for some reason, I didn’t want to. But Bologna demands to be seen. I was coming home from a quick day trip to Tuscany, leaving the train station on the route I knew by heart. I knew the streets, the sights, the beggars on the street corner. I didn’t think twice about where I was or what I was doing…and I suddenly realized I was a part of it. Bologna, with its beating heart and coursing blood, had enveloped me in its daily rhythms. And in that moment I saw it in a whole new way—as my home. My streets. My piazza. My city. My footprints echoed on patches of Earth that had seen countless lives before me, and would see many more to come. But in those months I called Bologna home, I was a part of that history. The enduring city of Bologna, Italy is a testament to time, and all who have been embraced by its red roofs and winding streets will not soon forget it.