- Tibaldi's Odyssey ceilings
- the 1711 Institute's collections
- the ship models
- the Specola
01What it is
Palazzo Poggi is a sixteenth-century palace on via Zamboni, built for the Poggi family. Since the early nineteenth century it has been the headquarters of the University of Bologna, which traditionally dates its founding to 1088 — see the university city.
02The frescoed rooms
Several halls are painted with scenes from the Odyssey by Pellegrino Tibaldi, and others by Nicolò dell'Abate — Mannerist ceilings full of giants, ships and sea monsters.
03The museum
The Museo di Palazzo Poggi displays the collections of the Institute of Sciences founded in Bologna in 1711: maps and globes, ship models, physics instruments, natural history, and the anatomical and obstetric models made to teach medicine.
Note The eighteenth-century wax anatomies are extraordinary and very frank. Some visitors, and many children, find them hard to look at.
Above the palace rises the Specola, the old astronomical observatory, with its own museum.
04The street outside
Via Zamboni is the spine of the student quarter: bookshops, faculties, arcades and Piazza Verdi at its center. Note It is lively late into the night, which is worth knowing if you are choosing a room.