011088, by tradition
The University of Bologna dates its founding to 1088, the traditional date for the first teaching of law here, and it is generally regarded as the oldest university in continuous operation in the Western world. It began not as a building but as students hiring teachers — the students were organized in "nations" by where they came from, and they ran the place.
02No campus — a quarter
For centuries lectures were given in rented rooms and churches around the city. In the 1560s the schools were gathered into the Archiginnasio beside San Petronio. In the early nineteenth century the university moved to Palazzo Poggi on via Zamboni, and the streets around it became the student quarter they still are.
Walk via Zamboni from the two towers: faculties behind palace doors, arcades, bookshops, the opera house on Piazza Verdi, and the Pinacoteca around the corner.
03Names that passed through
Copernicus studied law here in the 1490s. Luigi Galvani made frogs' legs twitch with electricity here in the eighteenth century. Laura Bassi, in 1732, became one of the first women in Europe to hold a university professorship. Guglielmo Marconi, the radio pioneer, was born in Bologna.
04Still learned
The Collegio di Spagna, founded in the fourteenth century for Spanish students, still admits them. The Orto Botanico, the university's botanical garden, is one of the oldest in Europe. And the Palazzo Poggi museum keeps the cabinet of the eighteenth-century Institute of Sciences.
Note The student quarter is lively late into the night. See neighborhoods if you are choosing where to sleep.
