A city of medieval brick that keeps inventing itself: modern art, restored cinema and contemporary architecture share the centre.
Last updated August 27, 2026
Modern Bologna combines art, science, cinema, student culture, exhibition architecture and the history of communications. The route begins around Piazza Maggiore, continues through Via Guglielmo Marconi and the university district, moves north to the Fair District, and finishes outside Porta San Felice at a museum filled with working machines.
On the second floor of City Hall in Palazzo Comunale on Piazza Maggiore, beside the Sala Farnese, the museum occupies rooms once used by the Papal Legate. Giorgio Morandi, born in Bologna in 1890 and deceased there in 1964, devoted much of his work to still lifes, flowers and landscapes. The collection follows his development chronologically, then separates watercolours, drawings and etchings by technique. More than 250 paintings, drawings, watercolours and etchings fill fifteen rooms over more than 1,000 square metres. The museum also preserves his personal library of more than 400 volumes, a small ancient-art collection and a faithful reconstruction of his Via Fondazza studio with original furniture and personal objects.
Official site →The house at Via IV Novembre 7 marks the birthplace of Guglielmo Marconi, born there on 25 April 1874. The stop connects Bologna's historic centre with the development of wireless telegraphy, radio, television and later telecommunications. The same street is also associated with the earlier university life of Nicolaus Copernicus.
About 15 kilometres from Bologna in Pontecchio Marconi, Villa Griffone adds a hands-on science stop to the modern itinerary. The museum follows Marconi's wireless-telegraph experiments and includes working reconstructions of scientific instruments. The listed address is Via Celestini 1.
Official site →From Piazza Malpighi, follow Via Guglielmo Marconi to Via Azzo Gardino and the Bologna Film Library. The Renzo Renzi Library contains about 20,000 books and 1,000 periodicals on the history, theory and technology of Italian and international cinema. It treats film as both a cultural phenomenon and an art form, making this more than a place to watch movies.
At the Bologna Film Library on Via Azzo Gardino, the audiovisual section holds about 8,000 films on VHS and DVD, including early cinema, restored films and classic titles, as well as soundtracks, radio interviews and vinyl recordings of actors' readings. Materials are consulted on site. There are 19 stations for viewing films and four stations for listening to recordings.
Official site →At the Bologna Film Library on Via Azzo Gardino, the Photo Archive preserves more than one million images in cinema and Bologna sections. It documents film history and the city's visual heritage, and also keeps promotional material such as posters, billboards, operator guides, brochures, sketches, cartoons, stamps and cards. The archive is available to the public under the library's consultation rules.
Official site →At the Bologna Film Library on Via Azzo Gardino, the archive contains more than 1,000 volumes on Pasolini, journals, press cuttings, dissertations, audiovisual material, photographs, radio recordings and recordings of meetings, debates and speeches. The collection also includes a donation of personal papers and objects connected with actress Laura Betti. Its purpose is to preserve the material, make it available to researchers and support public initiatives.
Official site →At the Bologna Film Library on Via Azzo Gardino, the Film Library houses the complete Charlie Chaplin Archive, covering more than 75 years of professional and personal history through manuscripts, typed documents, photographs and press cuttings. The material follows the development of films from early character notes through shooting, editing and projects that never reached the screen, with letters, contracts, journals, drawings, programmes, souvenirs and other working documents.
Official site →The Cineteca's two-screen cinema at Via Azzo Gardino 65/B programmes films every day, including restored works, titles no longer in ordinary distribution and films that rarely reach the commercial market. The nearby Cameo bar at Via Azzo Gardino 65 provides a pause before or after a screening.
Official site →Between Via Don Minzoni, Via delle Lame and Via Marconi, the Manifattura delle Arti is a cultural district of almost 100,000 square metres created by reworking the old river-port area. The port was built in the 16th century around Bologna's canals, served as a mercantile heart for two centuries, then became an industrial zone with a slaughterhouse, tobacco factory, paper mill and bread oven. The present complex, inaugurated in 2003 through a joint university and city project by Aldo Rossi and Roberto Scannavini, includes the Cineteca in the former tobacco works, the Cinema Lumière, DAMS laboratories in the former slaughterhouse and MAMbo in the former bread oven. Its parks include the two-hectare Parco dell'XI Settembre with a children's area and dog area, Giardino John Klemen and Parco del Cavaticcio with Mimmo Paladino's fountain and the former salt warehouse Salara.
Official site →The market in Piazzetta Pasolini brings local products and kilometre-zero street food into the Manifattura delle Arti, close to the Cineteca, Renzo Renzi Library, Pasolini Study Centre and Chaplin Archive. It is a useful way to connect the district's industrial history with the region's current food culture.
Official site →MAMbo occupies the former bread oven of the old port within the Manifattura delle Arti. Its 9,500 square metres combine temporary exhibitions, experimentation and a permanent collection of modern and contemporary art from the 1950s to the present. The thematic sections include Arte e Ideologia, 1977 - Arte e Azione, Arte Povera and recent acquisitions. The building also contains the Ex Forno bar-restaurant, listed with hours from 8:00-2:00 in winter and 9:00-2:00 in summer, plus the CorrainiMAMbo art bookshop.
Official site →At Via Riva di Reno 57, this collection adds a quieter modern-art stop to the Manifattura route. The works include sculpture by Giacomo Manzu, Arnaldo and Gio Pomodoro, Augusto Murer and others, alongside paintings by Giacomo Balla, Filippo de Pisis and Renato Guttuso.
Official site →The MAST arts, experimentation and technology centre on Via Speranza 42, just outside the inner route, combines a gallery of industrial and work photography with temporary exhibitions, an auditorium, a cafeteria and a non-profit foundation. Its permanent gallery has displayed contemporary works including Anish Kapoor's curved mirrored Reach. The building is a modern landmark in Bologna's first peripheral ring.
Official site →Bologna and its province have served as locations for more than one hundred films since 1916. Directors associated with productions filmed here include the Taviani brothers, Montaldo, Pasolini, Antonioni, Bellocchio, Bolognini, Fellini, Salvatores, Luchetti and the Bolognese filmmaker Pupi Avati. The city's porticoes, streets and contrasting social settings have supported everything from intimate local stories to crime and noir cinema.
Via Irnerio and the neighbouring Via Zamboni form the university district. It combines a carefree student atmosphere with a strong cultural and political life, and it is an essential part of modern Bologna even when no lecture or museum is on the itinerary.
The streets are closely connected with Andrea Pazienza, one of Italy's most influential cartoonists. He enrolled in Bologna's DAMS course, devoted to art, music and performance, in 1974 and drew on the city's student politics and social energy for The Extraordinary Adventures of Pentothal. Pentothal is a restless student dropout and designer, while Massimo Zanardi, known as Zanna, is a darker and more cruel figure. The district also recalls Bonvi, the pen name of Franco Bonvicini, whose Sturmtruppen parodied military life and Nazism and was followed by characters and series including Cattivik, Nick Carter, Stories of Outer Space and After-the-Bomb Chronicles.
Continue from Via Irnerio through Via Mascarella and Via Stalingrado to the Fair District. Kenzo Tange was commissioned in 1967 to design a northern expansion that could combine Bologna's medieval identity with modern architectural lines. His office complex for the fair organisers and the surrounding buildings use strong vertical forms around a central square of more than 7,000 square metres, while porticoes and towers translate local motifs into a contemporary plan. Construction began in 1979.
Official site →Piazza della Costituzione contains a faithful reconstruction of the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion originally designed by Le Corbusier for the 1925 Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris. Architects José Oubrerie and Giuliano Gresleri created the Bologna version. It later hosted the 1977 SAIE international construction fair and the Oikos Association Research Centre, which focused on urban quality and quality of life.
Official site →At Via Col di Lana 7, outside Porta San Felice, this unusual private museum tells the history of audiovisual communication through more than 1,200 original working mechanisms in about 2,000 square metres of exhibition space. The collection includes around 800 displayed pieces, including more than 400 films, an early electronic black-and-white television from 1935 and late-19th-century wooden crank telephones. The founder, Giovanni Pelagalli, leads visitors through the development of radio, phonography, cinema, telephones, television and computing. The Marconi room includes rare original equipment and a furnished 1:75 model of the Elettra yacht, which Marconi converted into a floating laboratory for radiotelegraphy, radiotelephony and early blind-navigation experiments.
Official site →The museum's phonography section runs from Edison's 1878 tin-foil recording through trumpet, crank, cylinder and disc gramophones to the compact disc. The cinema section covers magic lanterns, the Lumière brothers' 1895 projection, silent projectors, sound projectors and 35 mm and 70 mm film. A telephone hall follows technology from Meucci's 1871 work through wooden crank telephones, 20th-century systems and early satellite phones. Television displays include a 1928 Raytheon lamp, early black-and-white sets, colour experiments and the rise of Italian television after 1954.
The computing section starts with a slide rule from 1850, moves through early keyboard and memory devices and reaches the mechanical calculators of the 1930s and 1940s. The Ducati Hall adds civilian and military radios, cameras, mechanical cutting tools, engines, motorcycles and documents connected with the three Ducati brothers and their Bologna workshop.
Many city collections are free, while individual museums, temporary displays, factory tours and specialist venues can have their own admission rules. Many museums close on Monday, ticket desks often close 30-45 minutes before the stated closing time, and restaurant kitchens may close an hour before the venue. Use the IAT and UIT tourist-information offices for current opening hours, tickets and reservations. Check the operator before travelling, particularly for the Nigelli Collection, the Casoncello Gardens, the Hortus Conclusus, the motor museums outside the centre and the Communication Museum.
| Service | detail |
|---|---|
| Bologna Welcome Card | 48 hours €20 or 72 hours €30; free entry to principal monuments plus reductions on exhibitions, events and services. Check Bologna Welcome for current products. |
| Card Musei Metropolitani | Adult/reduced €25/20; valid for 12 months from activation, online or at listed sales points. Details at Card Musei Metropolitani. |
| TPER urban bus | 75-minute ticket €1.30; day ticket €5; 10-ride CityPass €12; onboard ticket €1.50. Children under 1 metre were listed as free. Check TPER for current fares and routes. |
| Historic-centre driving | The ZTL limits motor traffic daily from 7:00 to 20:00. parking guidance put a 24-hour stay at roughly €5-20; leave the car outside the centre when possible. |
| Bicycle access | The ring-road cycle route was listed at 8.4 kilometres. Dynamo at Via dell'Indipendenza 71/Z offers guarded parking, rental, repairs, guided rides and food; hours were 6:30-22:30 Monday-Friday, 7:30-22:30 Saturday and 8:30-20:30 Sunday. |
The centre is compact and generally easiest on foot or by bicycle, but the porticoes, steep hillside sections and older paving can create obstacles for visitors with limited mobility. Almost all museums are equipped for visitors with mobility difficulties. TPER operates accessible buses with ramps; for a lower-frequency service, an equipped vehicle could be requested three working days ahead by giving the time and boarding stop. Airport and station assistance services are also available.