Walk into the courtyard of the Archiginnasio in Bologna and you walk into a gallery of coats of arms. Thousands of them cover the walls and ceilings, painted and carved by students over the centuries, each one a small act of vanity from a young man far from home. This was the main seat of the University of Bologna, which claims to be the oldest university in the world, founded in 1088. Students from all over Europe gathered here to study law, and the city got rich and proud on them. Dante, Petrarch and Copernicus are among the names said to have passed through, and the university's first women professors arrived here long before most of Europe allowed such a thing.
The most unforgettable room is the Anatomical Theatre, carved entirely in spruce wood in the seventeenth century, with a canopy supported by two skinless figures and a dissecting table in the centre. It is ghoulish, beautiful and entirely serious, and a reminder that medicine had to be learned by looking. It was mostly rebuilt after bombing in the Second World War, using the original pieces.
All of this sits on the doorstep of Piazza Maggiore and the churches of San Petronio and Santo Stefano, in a city whose porticoes were added to the UNESCO list in 2021. There are about forty kilometres of covered arcades in Bologna, built because the medieval city needed more room for students and sensibly extended the upper floors over the pavement. Walking from one to the next in a rainstorm is one of the great urban pleasures.
For a motorcyclist, the centre is a puzzle, and a limited-traffic zone with cameras means you should leave the bike outside the old walls, in a paid car park or on the street in the area beyond the ring, and enter on foot. Bologna's hills begin just south, on the road to the Apennine ridge. The Futa and Raticosa passes have been favourites with Italian riders for ages, and the Mille Miglia and Giro d'Italia ran through them. Fuel at petrol stations on the ring.
Eat well here. This is the home of tagliatelle al ragu, tortellini in brodo and mortadella, and the evening aperitivo is a ritual. A late afternoon wander under the arcades, then a long dinner, is the right way to spend the day.