One of Italy's grandest squares and the history that built it, from Roman Bononia to the free commune's brick palazzi.
Last updated August 27, 2026
Bologna grew where the lower hills meet the plain, between the Aposa and Ravone waterways. Its position between northern and southern Italy, and between Europe and the Mediterranean, made it a meeting point for peoples, trades and ideas. The university, the canals and the tower-filled medieval city each left a different layer that can still be read in the streets.
| Period | What happened | What to look for today |
|---|---|---|
| Bronze Age to 10th century BC | Early settlements occupied the plain and lower hills. Villanovan communities appeared between the 9th and 10th centuries BC, with an important Iron Age site at Villanova di Castenaso. | The archaeological collections and the wider plain around Bologna |
| 6th to 2nd century BC | Etruscan influence made Felsina, also called Velzna, a major centre. Boii Gauls later occupied the area until Roman expansion reached it in 196 BC. | The Etruscan and Villanovan rooms of the Civic Archaeological Museum |
| 189 BC to late antiquity | The Romans founded Bononia as a colony with Latin law and its own administration. After the empire fell in 476, Goths, Byzantines and Longobards ruled the city. | Roman remains, funerary stones and the road pattern around the centre |
| 774 | Charlemagne defeated the Longobards, and Bologna was handed to Pope Adrian I. | The layered walls and gates shown on the canals and city walls map |
| 1088 | The Alma Mater Studiorum was founded. Its teaching community accelerated the city's economic and cultural growth and gave Bologna an international character. | Archiginnasio, the university quarter and the university museums |
| 1176 and 1249 | The Lombard League defeated Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. In 1249 Bologna captured King Enzo, son of Frederick II, who remained a privileged prisoner in the palace that bears his name until 1272. | Palazzo Re Enzo and the civic spaces around Piazza Maggiore |
| 13th to 15th centuries | Guelph and Ghibelline conflicts were followed by the rule of the Pepoli and Bentivoglio families. Bologna became one of Europe's largest cities, with roughly 60,000 residents by the end of the 13th century. | Tower houses, Palazzo Pepoli, the Bentivoglio chapels and the medieval museums |
| Textile expansion | Silk production and a sophisticated canal system powered mills, moved goods and supported the city's prosperity. The same hydraulic network later became hidden beneath the streets. | Moline Canal, the old port, the Industrial Heritage Museum and Via Piella |
| 1506 to 1860 | Pope Julius II took Bologna into the Papal State. Napoleonic rule interrupted that period from 1796 to 1815; in 1860 the city entered the Kingdom of Sardinia and then the Kingdom of Italy. | Palazzo d'Accursio, the Risorgimento Museum and civic monuments |
| Second World War | Bologna's railway junction made it a strategic target. Allied bombing damaged the city, which stood behind the German Gothic Line in 1944. | The Resistance Museum, Ustica Memorial and the restored Anatomical Theatre |
From the middle of the 11th century to the beginning of the 15th, Bologna gained the university in 1088, communal privileges in 1116, the right to mint the bolognino in 1191, and powerful guilds of artisans, notaries and jurists. This was the period in which Piazza Maggiore, the porticoes and the towers took their defining shape. Silk, law and commerce made the city wealthy, while poets and scholars such as Irnerio, Guido Guinizelli and Dante were drawn to its intellectual life.
The later medieval and Renaissance story is equally visible in the museums. The Pepoli family transformed its palace over centuries; the Bentivoglio family commissioned chapels, palaces and works by the leading painters of Bologna; and the Carracci reform of painting in the 1580s made the city one of Italy's most important artistic centres. The walks below connect those political and artistic stories rather than treating monuments as isolated sights.
Piazza Maggiore is Bologna's civic centre and the natural starting point for a historical walk. The Roman axis now expressed by Via Rizzoli and Via Ugo Bassi leads through the old walled city, while the square gathers religious, political and commercial power into one architectural scene. The pedestrian route is short, but the buildings reward a slow circuit from the oldest palace group to the basilica and the Pavaglione.
| Stop | Place | Map or route note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Palazzo del Podestà | Piazza Maggiore; square map highlight 1 |
| 2 | Palazzo Re Enzo and Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo | Under the Voltone del Podestà; highlight 2 |
| 3 | Palazzi del Comune and Piazza del Nettuno | Palazzo d'Accursio, the Fountain of Neptune and Salaborsa; highlight 3 |
| 4 | Basilica of San Petronio | Piazza Maggiore; highlight 4 |
| 5 | Palazzo dei Notai | South side of Piazza Maggiore; highlight 5 |
| 6 | Palazzo dei Banchi and the Pavaglione | The portico continues towards the Archiginnasio; highlight 6 |
Construction began around 1200, but the façade seen today largely comes from a 1484 rebuilding under Giovanni II Bentivoglio. A popular uprising ended Bentivoglio's rule before the redesign was finished, leaving the building without the planned eaves and merlons. Look closely at the portico supports: more than three thousand carved rosettes make each bay different. Above them, the Salone del Podestà was Bologna's great hall for justice, festivals and public events. The balcony once carried government announcements and executions to the crowd below.
Tip: Pass beneath the Voltone del Podestà and look for the Arengo Tower, which appears to rest on the four great pillars of the intersection.
The palatium novum was built between 1244 and 1246 for the city government, but after King Enzo of Sardinia was captured at Fossalta in 1249 it became his luxurious prison until his death in 1272. The palace was restored by Alfonso Rubbiani between 1905 and 1913. Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo stands beside it, and a Lambertini family tower is built into the complex. The covered crossing once held a busy market, two gallows are still visible in the arcade wing facing the square, and four patron saints were placed at the intersection in 1525. A whisper against one corner pillar can be heard by someone at the opposite corner.
Tip: The story of Enzo's failed escape in a wine barrel belongs to local legend, but the palace, the captivity and his burial in San Domenico are part of Bologna's documented civic memory.
The 13th-century tower rises about 47 metres above the Voltone. Its great bell, the campanazzo, was installed in 1453 and was used to summon citizens in danger or for major public events. The tower has no independent foundation and visually grows out of the palace arcade.
The city acquired the lawyer Accursio's tower and palace in the late 13th century, and the complex became the seat of government. The clock tower rises over the former residence, which was also known as Palazzo delle Biade because part of it served as a grain store. Inside are courtyards, the Farnese Hall, the surviving Farnese Chapel, the Hercules Hall, the council rooms and the former cardinal's apartments. The latter now hold the Collezioni Comunali d'Arte, with paintings, crucifixes and furnishings from the 13th to the 19th century, including works associated with Pelagio Palagi, Artemisia Gentileschi, Donato Creti, Ludovico Carracci and Giuseppe Maria Crespi.
Official site →Piazza del Nettuno was laid out in 1564 and the fountain was completed in 1566. Tommaso Laureti designed the basin, Jean Boulogne, known as Giambologna, made the bronze Neptune and Zanobio Portigiani cast it. The statue was produced in the workshop connected with San Petronio, where the plaque also recalls Michelangelo's 1506 statue of Julius II, Giambologna's Neptune and Menganti's Gregory XIII. Red and pale stone echo Bologna's civic colours, while the fountain's water arrived through channels from two sources south of the city. The monument was practical as well as symbolic: water carriers could deliver its supply to residents for a small fee.
Tip: The trident later became the emblem of the Maserati company, founded in Bologna. The darker stone behind Neptune is the famous Pietra della Vergogna viewing point.
The civic government laid the foundation in 1390 and commissioned Antonio di Vincenzo to build what was intended to be the largest church in Christendom. The ambitious plan called for a Latin cross, gigantic transepts and a 150-metre dome, but the arrival of the Papal army in 1506 and the expense of the project curtailed the design. Work reached the apse in 1659; the present church is about 130 metres long, 58 metres wide and 45 metres high, with a façade still unfinished between marble below and brick above. Jacopo della Quercia's Porta Magna began in 1425. Inside, the Gothic nave has three aisles and ten main pillars, Giovanni Domenico Cassini's 1655 meridian line, chapels with work by Giovanni da Modena and Parmigianino, and the four reconstructed crosses associated with the old city boundaries. Charles V was crowned emperor here by Pope Clement VII on 24 February 1530.
Tip: The Cassini meridian is the longest indoor sundial of its kind. The church can feel much cooler than the square, so allow time for your eyes and temperature to adjust.
Official site →The Guild of Notaries first worked under the Podestà portico before moving into this 13th-century building. Antonio di Vincenzo designed its six original windows; Alfonso Rubbiani reshaped the palace in the early 20th century. The ground floor was once a salt store, and the guild emblem, three ink pots with quills on a red field, remains on the façade facing Piazza Maggiore.
Palazzo dei Banchi takes its name from the small banks and money changers' stalls that once occupied the site. The building begun in 1412 is principally a grand façade designed by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola between 1563 and 1568 to conceal older houses. Its portico joins the covered pedestrian route from Via Rizzoli to the Pavaglione, the elegant walkway beside San Petronio that leads to the Archiginnasio and the Civic Archaeological Museum.