Bologna is the Italian city where walking is best when it rains, and that is not a weather note: its porticoes run for 62 kilometres, 42 of them in the historic centre alone, and since 2021 they are a UNESCO World Heritage site. It means a two-day itinerary here is not organised around good weather, as it would be elsewhere, but around opening hours.
And there is one thing to say before any aesthetic advice, because no printed guide contains it yet. The two towers, the symbol of the city, cannot be climbed. The Garisenda has been closed to the public since 2023 and the Torre degli Asinelli is closed as well because of the building site around it: the work runs until 2028. Anyone coming to Bologna for that climb needs to know before buying the train ticket.
This guide keeps the centre in the first day and the hill in the second, and in the second it puts the longest portico in the world. All the practical figures are at the end, in a single place, with the date on which I checked them.
Monday, and the two towers: the two constraints to know first
Here is what decides the calendar. On Monday the Pinacoteca Nazionale and the Santo Stefano complex close together, which is to say two of this itinerary’s stops. San Petronio, Santa Maria della Vita and San Luca open every day.
The second constraint is the towers’ building site, and it is worth understanding what is inside it, because it is a piece of art history happening live. The Garisenda leans more than the tower of Pisa, and in 2023 it began to oscillate abnormally: the city fenced it off, then funded an intervention worth five and a half million euros plus four from the Region. The site is currently installing the trestles of the so-called “Pisa machines”, which will pull the tower with steel cables while mortar is injected underground to consolidate the foundations. The structure is declared stable, with no risk of collapse.
If the view from above is why you wanted to climb, the alternative the city itself points to is the Torre dell’Orologio of Palazzo d’Accursio, on piazza Maggiore. It is not the same thing and nobody pretends it is, but the full turn of the horizon is there.
Day 1, morning: piazza Maggiore and San Petronio
You begin at piazza Maggiore, which is a square of brick and not of marble, and that already says a good deal about how Bologna built its own image. Around it stand Palazzo d’Accursio, the Palazzo del Podestà with the Torre dell’Arengo, the Palazzo dei Notai and, along the long side, the basilica of San Petronio.
San Petronio is the largest Gothic brick church in the world, and its facade is unfinished: the marble cladding stops a third of the way up, and above it the bare brick continues. This is not a site halted yesterday, it is a site halted in the sixteenth century, and the reason it stopped is the interesting part of the story.
Inside there is something no other Italian religious building has in this form: the meridian of Giovanni Domenico Cassini, traced in 1655, 67 metres long on the floor of the left nave. It is not an ornament, it is an astronomical instrument, and it served to measure the length of the year.
I have given the basilica an article of its own, because the facade and the meridian deserve to be looked at knowing what to seek: you will find it in Basilica of San Petronio.
Day 1: the Pinacoteca Nazionale, and why you go
The Pinacoteca is in via delle Belle Arti, in the university quarter, ten minutes from piazza Maggiore. It is the museum that tells five centuries of Emilian painting, and it has three reasons to be in your itinerary.
The first is Raphael’s Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia, painted around 1514 for a Bolognese chapel. It is in room 15, in its place: if you have read elsewhere that it is on loan, that information needs checking again.
The second is Giotto’s Bologna Polyptych, one of the master’s few signed works and the only one of his left in the city. The third are the Carracci, who invented the modern academy in Bologna, and Guido Reni, whose Massacre of the Innocents is one of the most violent pictures of the Italian seventeenth century.
Which works to look for and which room they are in is in Pinacoteca of Bologna: the works to look for.
Day 1, afternoon: the Lamentation by Niccolò dell’Arca
In via Clavature, two steps from piazza Maggiore, there is a church called Santa Maria della Vita which almost everyone walks past without going in. Inside stands one of the most violent sculptural groups of the Italian fifteenth century: the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Niccolò dell’Arca, seven life-size terracotta figures, modelled around 1463.
What you do not expect is the noise. The three Marys do not weep in silence as tradition would have it: their mouths are open, and the Magdalene arrives at a run from the right with her veil torn back into the air, a scream carved in clay. Gabriele d’Annunzio called it “the scream in stone”, and for once the poet’s phrase is precise.
I have written about it in The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Niccolò dell’Arca.
Day 1, closing: Santo Stefano and the Seven Churches
The first day ends by walking east, into a triangular sloping square that is the finest in Bologna, and at the end of which there is not one church but seven.
The Santo Stefano complex is a stratification of buildings raised at different moments between the fifth and the thirteenth century and linked to one another: the church of the Crucifix, the Holy Sepulchre with the aedicule imitating the one in Jerusalem, the saints Vitale and Agricola, the courtyard of Pilate with its stone basin at the centre, the Trinity, the medieval cloister. Entry is free and you come out not quite knowing how many churches you crossed, which is exactly the effect the complex has always had.
The detail to look for is in the courtyard: the basin at its centre is not the bowl in which Pilate washed his hands, as the name would have it, and is instead a Lombard artefact of the eighth century. I have written about it in Santo Stefano and the Seven Churches.
Day 2: the portico of San Luca, all of its arches
The second day leaves the centre and climbs, and the climb is the high point of the trip.
From the Meloncello portico the portico of San Luca sets off: 489 steps, fifteen chapels and about three hundred metres of ascent, all under cover, over a route of some 3,600 metres. The arches are traditionally said to be 666, though the Comune itself writes that the real number is slightly lower and depends on how you count them. It is the longest portico in the world, it was built between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the money of Bolognese citizens, and it served to shelter the procession that carried the icon of the Madonna into the city each year.
At the top stands the sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, with a dome you can climb, and from up there you see the plain as far as the Apennines. Entry is free, the climb takes a good hour at an easy pace, and for those who would rather not walk there is a shuttle service.
It is the stop that, now that the towers are closed, gives Bologna back its view from above. I have written about it in The sanctuary of San Luca and its portico.
The porticoes, which are not a background detail
It is worth a paragraph on what you cross going from one stop to the next, because in Bologna it is a World Heritage site.
The porticoes were born in the Middle Ages out of a tolerated building abuse: the university city needed lodgings, owners began extending the upper floors out over the street, and the Comune, instead of forbidding it, made it compulsory in 1288 and fixed the minimum height at seven Bolognese feet, enough for a man on horseback to pass. The result is a city whose streets are arcaded for 62 kilometres.
Worth looking at as you walk: the wooden porticoes of via Marsala and Strada Maggiore, which are the oldest and show the original timber structure; and those of via Farini and the Pavaglione, nineteenth-century and monumental, where the portico becomes architecture of display.
What not to do
Three mistakes that cost time or an entire stop.
Putting the Pinacoteca and Santo Stefano on a Monday. Both close, and they are the two stops Monday cancels together. If you have only a Monday and one other day, keep the Monday for San Petronio, the Lamentation and San Luca, which open anyway.
Counting on the climb up the towers. You cannot climb until 2028, and this is not one of those temporary closures that reopen within a month: it is a structural site with a declared deadline.
Doing San Luca on a summer afternoon. The portico is covered and therefore in shade, but it is three hundred metres of ascent, and the climb in mid-afternoon in July is an avoidable effort. Early morning is the right moment, for the light over the plain as well.
If you have half a day more
Three directions, in the order I would recommend them.
The Archiginnasio, in piazza Galvani behind San Petronio, was the first unified seat of the University and holds the Anatomical Theatre in spruce wood, where public dissections were performed, and the Sala dello Stabat Mater. It costs three euros and is two minutes from the centre.
The basilica of San Domenico guards the Arca di San Domenico, a marble chest worked on by Nicola Pisano in the thirteenth century, by Niccolò dell’Arca in the fifteenth, who takes from this work the name we know him by, and by a nineteen-year-old Michelangelo, who carved three statuettes for it. Entry is free.
If you would rather leave the city, Emilia-Romagna has Ravenna and its mosaics an hour away by train, and the Malatesta Temple in Rimini a little further.
Practical information
Figures checked on 1 September 2026 on the official sites of the individual monuments. Prices and hours change: before you leave, at least re-check the Pinacoteca and Santo Stefano, which are the two stops with a closing day.
Tickets. Entry to the basilica of San Petronio is free, and so is its museum; the three visitable chapels (Magi, San Sebastiano, San Vincenzo Ferrer) cost 5 euros full and 3 reduced, which applies to 11-18 year olds, to over 65s and to guided groups, with school groups at 2 euros and free entry under 10. The Pinacoteca Nazionale costs 12 euros full, with the reduced rate at 2 euros for European Union citizens between 18 and 25 and free entry under 18. Santo Stefano is free, with a donation welcome. Santa Maria della Vita costs 8 euros full and 5 reduced, audioguide in four languages included, with school groups at 4 euros and free entry under 5. The sanctuary of San Luca and the basilica of San Domenico are free. The Archiginnasio is free, and the ticket for the Anatomical Theatre and the Sala dello Stabat Mater costs 3 euros.
Hours. San Petronio: every day 10.00-18.00, last entry at 17.50; the museum closes at 17.30. Pinacoteca Nazionale: 9.00-19.00, closed on Monday, last entry half an hour before. Santo Stefano, tourist visits: Tuesday to Saturday 9.30-12.30 and 14.30-19.00, Sunday 9.30-12.30 and 15.00-19.00; on Monday visits are suspended and the complex opens only from 18.00 to 19.30. Santa Maria della Vita: every day 10.00-18.30, last entry at 18.00. Sanctuary of San Luca: every day 7.00-12.30 and 14.30-18.00, closing at 19.00 in summer; the dome is visitable Monday to Saturday 10.30-13.30 and 14.30-18.30, Sunday 12.00-13.30 and 14.30-18.30. Archiginnasio: the palace Monday to Saturday 9.00-19.00, closed on Sunday; the Anatomical Theatre Monday to Friday 10.00-18.00, Saturday 10.00-19.00, Sunday and public holidays 10.00-14.00.
Attention, two closures to know. The panoramic terrace of San Petronio has been closed permanently at the end of the restoration work, so any offer including it is out of date. And Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande, a detached seat of the Pinacoteca, has been closed for refurbishment since 1 July 2024 and as of 1 September 2026 has not reopened.
Free admission. At the Pinacoteca entry is free under 18 and free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month. San Petronio, Santo Stefano, San Luca, San Domenico and the Archiginnasio palace are always free.
Getting there. The centre is a fifteen-minute walk from Bologna Centrale station along via dell’Indipendenza, arcaded the whole way. For San Luca take a bus to the Meloncello and climb from there on foot under the portico, or use the shuttle that goes to the top.
How long. San Petronio with its museum needs an hour, an hour and a half adding the chapels. The Pinacoteca asks for at least two hours. Santo Stefano forty minutes. Santa Maria della Vita half an hour, which sounds little and is not. San Luca is half a day counting the climb and the descent.
On affiliation, in fairness. You will find no links to bookable tickets in this article, and the reason is that in Bologna they are not needed: the main stops are free and the two paying ones have no queues. I am not selling you a skip-the-line where there is no line.
Enjoy the visit, and if it rains do not open your umbrella: here you hardly ever need one.
Photo credits: piazza Maggiore and the Santo Stefano complex by Vanni Lazzari (CC BY-SA 4.0); the two towers by Fred Romero (CC BY 2.0); San Petronio by GiorgioGaleotti, Giotto’s polyptych by Nicola Quirico, the porticoes of via Farini by Maddalena Osnato, the sanctuary of San Luca by Syrio, the Lamentation by Velvet, the anatomical theatre by Palickap, the via Piella window by Marcamps and the view from the colle della Guardia by Puscas Vadim (CC BY-SA 4.0). All from Wikimedia Commons.
