Basing in Bologna For Emilia-Romagna With A Car

Are you sure you will need a car any day? How many places you are interested in can't be reached by train?

If you really need a car, You could stay in Modena. It's smaller and less crowded than Bologna, avoiding the local ZTL will be easier.

Same for Parma: small, rich, foodie. A little boring, but a quintessentially Emiliana town.

Transport along the axis of Parma, Modena, Reggio E., and Bologna is very good both by train and car, so you can get around easily. However, driving around Bologna is very time consuming - it's a much bigger city, the intersection of several autostrade, it has suburban development, and lots of commercial traffic. You would spend a lot of time leaving and entering the urban area for day trips. Another vote for Modena.

Is Parma an option as well? I’ve heard Bologna first and Parma second.

Also, have I just heard wrong and most do this area without a car? I’m willing to adapt if need be/beneficial. I just am worried about connecting dots in an area that seems more rural than the bigger cities where I always ditch the car.

It depends very much on your specific itinerary--all of the Emilia Romagna towns you are likely to be visiting are on the train line. If you have some excursions to farms or factories planned, then it could be the case that you want a car. I would flesh out all of the specifics first and then decide--it could be the case that you only need a driver or taxi a couple times.

Parma and Modena are of similar size and attraction. Read up on the area and decide which sites and activities are of the most interest before you decide. Most of the attractions are in the cities or fairly close by, so you can easily visit the area w/o a car. Also the landscape is flat as heck, so you would not be missing any natural wonders.

@valadelphia Are taxis/private drivers pretty easy to come by there? I don’t want to assume they have rideshare.

The main reason I was going to rent a car is because I’m doing an all-day cooking lesson at Casa Artusi, which is close to Forlì. Everything else I would be able to use the train and link if there’s taxis. I’m doing this on a Saturday (after we arrive Friday evening). Maybe I could drop the car off that day, but I’m going to Tuscany right after Emilia-Romagna (on Tuesday), which I would then need a car for again.

Don't miss Ravenna.

We did several days in Bologna in the summer 2019. We hired a private driver for three days when some or all of our group (six people) wanted to go places that weren't easy by train (or couldn't connect what we wanted to do in a single day by train). That worked really well, and then we took the train to visit cities (Modena, Parma, etc). We chose to hire the driver rather than rent a car because then we didn't have to worry about navigation, parking the car between uses, or putting all our car days in a row. The size of our group also made a driver with a van much more convenient than a rental car or two.

I do think there is enough outside the city centers to make access to a car in Bologna valuable. But it doesn't have to be your own rental car.

Thanks everyone!

@HK That’s food for thought, thank you. Did you find a company that you trust that you could recommend, or was is an individual?

We stayed several nights each in Parma, Modena, Bologna, and Ravenna, only having a car in Ravenna (rented in Forli, I think) so that we could go meet our dog's grandfather out in the country and to visit some towns like Comacchio, Cesenatico, and Brisighella, then stay for a few more nights in Portico di Romagna. From Modena we did a Tours by Locals tour of cheese-making, balsamic vinegar, etc and the very nice guy drove us to each place. We went to the castle of Torrechiara by bus, to Ferrara by train, and to Faenza by train.

Lots of cooking classes in Bologna, if you want to make travel easier.

It's a one-hour train or bus ride from Bologna to Florence, where you could then rent a car.

Yeah, a car in Bologna would suck pretty bad. My husband LOVES to drive in Italy, so we don't take trains and buses to avoid driving or save money --- we find it actually easier and often quicker to use the excellent public transportation in Italy whenever possible.

In Bologna itself you wouldn’t need a car or even a bus if you can walk 20-40 minutes to get to most places. Same for Parma and Modena.

There are some countryside restaurants that look amazing but unless you plan to go to a half dozen of them, hiring a driver for a couple nights might be more worthwhile than the trouble of renting and navigating?

Since you’ll have trouble dining without reservations, flexibility may not be as helpful with transport as one might think.

As others have said, several cities such as Parma and Modena are easily reached by train. However on one trip we did rent a car when staying in Bologna and parked in a central lot https://www.apcoa.it/en/parking-in/bologna/piazza-viii-agosto/

I'm glad we had the car for 2-3 days. On one day, for example, we set out towards the coast and ran across Faenza which turns out to be a town famous for ceramics (still have a serving tray that is a reminder of the trip), the small town of Pesaro on the coast which has a delightful pedestrian-only core, and a few other towns along the Adriatic coast. Much easier by car then public transit.

If you rent a car in Bologna be sure to understand how ZTL works, what the signs look like, and where it is in relation to where you want to drive. One map is at https://www.accessibilitacentristorici.it/ztl/Emilia-Romagna_en/bologna/mappa The parking garage above is not inside it but a sizeable adjoining region is.

As others said, the cities and the most of towns and villages along the line of "via Emilia" can be easily reached by train (Modena, Parma, Forlì, Piacenza, but even Forlimpopoli where Casa Artusi is). So having a car makes you wasting a lot of time driving to that places.
On the other side there are several things far from the train line that are very tricky (or impossible) to be easily reached by train (or bus). The most of Parmigiano-Reggiano dairies, for example, or the prosciutto makers. But even the most of fortress, or car producers, and also the museums about Pavarotti or Verdi.
So, my usual suggestion, is to create an itinerary thinking what you want to do and, when possible, do days using only the train and others using the car.
An example including Casa Artusi. If you go to Forlimpopoli by train you can combine in the same day the visit to Cesena, or Forlì, or even better could be Faenza (i like the ceramic museum!). If you do by car you can visit in the same day Dozza (the fortress and Regional Cellar), Brisighella (olive oil), Sogliano (Pit Cheese) and/or some other medieval villages or wine cellars in Romagna. So: there isn't a correct choice....

Great advice everyone. Thank you so much!

We are staying in Chieti for a month (Mar/April). We will be going from MXP to Castello Semivicoli and will stop in the Maranello/Modena area for a bit. I would recommend that in lieu of Bologna for a lot of the reasons already iterated.. As far as having a car, it's a bit hard to hire a taxi to drive you into the hills until you see a trattoria that looks inviting..... YMMV

Rome-in, sorry for the delayed reply. We found the driver through the tour company that we booked for a food tour. They didn’t usually work with him, but he met our needs for car size and access to a car seat.