Bologna

Industrial town and capital of Emilia-Romagna, Italy, at the foot of the Apennines, 80 km/50 mi north of Florence; population (2001 est) 370,000. It is a prosperous commercial centre and a major rail hub, linking southern and northern Italy. Industries include engineering, food-processing, and the manufacture of electrical components and chemicals. An important venue for specialist trade fairs (perfume, camping), it also hosts an annual international children's book fair.

The town has a cathedral and medieval towers, and medieval walls 8–10 km/5–6 mi in circumference. The university, which dates from the 11th century, laid the foundations of the study of anatomy and was attended by the poets Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso, the astronomer Copernicus, and later by the physicist Galvani and the inventor Marconi. The city holds an annual music festival, and is a noted publishing centre.

History Bologna was the site of an Etruscan town (Felsina) and, from 189 BC, a Roman colony. After the fall of the Western Empire in the 5th century AD, Bologna was taken by the Lombards and the Franks. It became a republic in the 12th century, and a free city adhered to the Guelph faction (supporters of the papal party) in the medieval period. It then passed under the domination of the Visconti and Bentivoglio families, before Pope Julius II took over in 1506. It voted to unite with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860, and joined the kingdom of Italy in 1861. Several popes, including Benedict XIV, have belonged to Bologna, and about 200 cardinals. The city was heavily bombed during World War II. After the war it became known as the centre of the ‘Red Belt’, because of Communist party dominance in local government. It retained this image until 1999, when the left lost control of the city in local elections for the first time in 54 years.

Architecture The town has many medieval, Renaissance, and baroque palaces and mansions. The cathedral (12th–18th centuries) has a baroque facade. Other religious foundations are S Petronio (14th–17th centuries), an unfinished Gothic basilica containing frescoes; the 13th-century S Domenico, which has a chapel containing the tomb of the saint; Sto Stefano, a group of churches of different periods, linked by cloisters and courtyards; and the Gothic church of S Francesco. Of the city's medieval towers, the most notable are the slender Torre degli Asinelli (1119), which is 98 m/322 ft high; and the Garisenda (1110), which is 49 m/161 ft high and leans 3 m/10 ft out of the perpendicular.

Education and culture The University of Bologna, one of the oldest in Europe, dates from the 11th century and developed from its school of law. In the Middle Ages students travelled to it from all over Europe; it became the principal centre for studies in civil and canon law during the 12th and 13th centuries, and its medical school claims to have been the first to dissect the human body. Bologna has two important libraries, an archaeological museum, and a picture gallery which is rich in works of artists of the Bolognese school, including the Carracci brothers. Bologna has long been a centre of printing, and its astronomical observatory (1712) is the oldest in Italy.

Bologna

Province of northern Italy in central Emilia-Romagna region; capital Bologna; area 3,702 sq km/1,429 sq mi; population (2000 est) 917,100.