Friday 5 October. We had another great day trekking around the historic sites of this bustling city. First stop was the open-air markets at the Quadrilatero off the imposing Piazza Maggiore, which was the centre of the original Roman settlement of Bologna. John had a great time buying fish for our dinner tonight – with a couple of obvious exceptions he had no idea what he was looking at. Time and taste will tell. (Stop Press: we’ve just eaten the fish – whatever it was - and the scampi and they were delicious.) We bought enough seafood, meat, veggies and fruit to see us through the next few days here. Then to Piazza Maggiore itself for a look at the huge statue of Neptune and a visit to the Palazzo Communale, which includes a statue of Pope Gregory XIII who as Bolognian Prelate devised the Gregorian calendar which we still use. A more modern note is provided on one outside wall of the palace – three large displays of photos of hundreds of Italian partisans who were killed for resisting the German occupation in World War II, many in this very spot. We visited a number of churches, including the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna’s largest Gothic church (132 metres long, 66 metres wide and 47 metres to the top of the dome). It has a huge sundial which runs almost 70 metres along one of the side aisles and catches the sunlight on its calibrations through a small hole in the roof. It was instrumental in identifying an anomaly in the Gregorian calendar and led to the inclusion of the leap year. To the seventeenth century Teatro Anatomico in the old Palazzo dell Archiginnasio, where autopsies and dissections were held, including on victims of the Inquisition (see photo). Then to the University Quarter and the Obstetrics Museum in the Museum of Natural Sciences (in the old Palazzo Poggi), with many casts of babies in utero, including a pair of twins. More churches, piazzas and leaning towers then back to our apartment for a seafood dinner and an early night.
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