Piazza Maggiore & the Basilica di San Petronio, Bologna
No square in northern Italy commands quite the same effortless authority as Piazza Maggiore. Ringed by medieval porticoes and anchored by the unfinished Gothic bulk of San Petronio, it is the living room of a city that has been continuously, gloriously itself for nine centuries.
The Square Itself
Piazza Maggiore is the social and architectural nucleus of Bologna, framed by the Palazzo dei Banchi, the Palazzo del Podestà and the Palazzo Comunale — each facade a chapter in the city's political history.
At dusk, when the terracotta stonework turns the colour of embers and students sprawl on the steps of the Neptune Fountain just next door in Piazza del Nettuno, the whole ensemble feels like a stage set that real life forgot to vacate.
Inside San Petronio
The basilica is the fifth-largest church in the world and was never finished — the facade is still half raw brick — yet inside it is breathtaking: soaring Gothic vaults, Giovanni da Modena's vivid 15th-century fresco of hell, and the longest sundial in the world inlaid in the marble floor by astronomer Giovanni Cassini in 1655.
Look up at the ribbed ceiling, then down at the brass meridian line stretching 67 metres across the nave floor; at solar noon a beam of light through a tiny hole in the roof traces the date with extraordinary precision.
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