Bologna and Its Two Nicknames

Bologna carries two nicknames that explain most of what you need to know. La Dotta, the learned one, home to the oldest university in the Western world, founded in 1088. And La Grassa, the fat one, because this is the city that gave the world tortellini, tagliatelle al ragù, and mortadella, the real product that got flattened into something entirely different once it crossed the Atlantic.

The city is built on arcades, nearly 40 kilometers of covered porticoes that let you walk from one end of the historic center to the other without an umbrella. Underneath them, the color runs almost uniformly terracotta, which earned Bologna a third, quieter nickname: La Rossa, the red one.

Climb the Asinelli Tower, still leaning slightly after nearly a thousand years, and the view makes the case better than any description could. Rooftops, red tile, university spires, and somewhere down there, someone's grandmother rolling pasta by hand the way it's been done for generations.