Of all the cities we have visited on this trip (Milan, Genoa, Florence, Bologna and Rome), I loved Bologna best and was sad to leave. It is a beautiful city with gorgeous architecture everywhere you turn and amazing food. For our next trip to Italy, I will plan to stay for much longer and take more day trips - there are so many places to visit that are all within an easy train ride.
We stayed in an AirBnB for our 4 nights in Bologna. It was in an apartment building that was well-located, about a 10-15 minute walk to the train station and a 15-20 minute walk to the Piazza Maggiore through a lovely neighborhood of small shops and restaurants along Via Galleria.
There is something to be said for staying in a residential neighborhood. It was great to have a washing machine midway through our three week trip, and to be able to make our own coffee and pick up a few groceries from a nearby supermarket and pastries from the bakery down the block.
MAMBo, the Bologna Museum of Modern Art is a lovely little museum and a nice change of pace. It focuses on Italian artists from 1950 on and also houses a very large collection of the works of Morandi, a revered artist in Italy and beyond.
Taxis are pretty much impossible in Bologna. There aren’t very many of them and they are in very high demand mornings and evenings - even our host said she had a hard time getting a cab. Also, the primary app to call them wouldn’t work for me because it couldn’t send a verification text to a US phone. The only cab stand that we encountered was downstairs in the underground parking lot at the train station.
We took a day trip to Ravenna (about an hour train ride from Bologna) to see the Byzantine museums and they were absolutely phenomenal! They were a bit farther apart than I expected, but we were able to see all of them, have a lovely lunch at a small mom and pop restaurant, Trattoria Rustica, and make a quick side detour to Dante’s grave. I would recommend buying tickets in advance on-line so when you arrive, you can go straight to viewing the mosaics.
Mosaics Travel Tip #1 There is one site that is very small — the Mausoleo di Galla Placida — and can only be viewed for 15 minutes with a specifically timed ticket. When you book on-line, you choose your time for that FIRST HOWEVER on the pdf of the ticket they send you, it is listed SECOND. We got off the train and navigated to the first site on the ticket, the Basilica of San Vitale. The two sites are right next to each other, and since it was a rainy Monday in November, the crowds were very light and we were able to view the Mausoleo after our scheduled time, that probably wouldn’t be the case in a busier season.
-Mosaics Travel Tip #2: The ticket is for five sites - four with mosaics and one museum. If you are pressed for time, you can skip the museum. The Basilica of San Vitale has the largest and most extensive mosaics and I wish we would have spent more time there rather than the museum.
- Mosiacs Travel Trip #3: While it has been incredibly convenient to have our train tickets and credit cards on our phones, it was very nerve-wracking after a day navigating on Google maps to have very little battery life at the end of the day, before our train back to Bologna. I will definitely be carrying a backup battery charger from now on.
TL:DR - Go to Bologna! And do not miss Ravenna!