Bologna is to good living what heaven is to good living (but different kinds of good)!

I spent 5 nights in Bologna at an Airbnb that I've stayed at before, 4 years ago.  This has the advantage that I know the area, where the markets and pharmacies are, where the good restaurants are (or were), etc.  I had a good time visiting old haunts and reacquainting myself with the geography.

But also visiting new places I hadn't been before.

Bologna is a civilized place.  Back a few centuries ago (1500s?) there was a huge building program and the duke decided that all new buildings should have porticos.

These are set-backs on the ground floor that are quite wide, up to 20 feet.  In the summer the porticos provide shade and a cooler place to walk.  In the fall and winter, they provide shelter from the rains.  Since the construction replaced much of the historic center (think the Haussmann project in Paris), these porticos are nearly everywhere to provide a retreat for all.  The picture above was taken at night along the front of a palazzo adjacent to my Airbnb (which, by the way, is in a marvelous area--a hundred meters to the Seven Churches in one direction and in another direction, a hundred meters to the Galleria Cavour where all the posh shops are located).

The palazzos (aka apartment buildings, not palaces, in English) come in a variety of decoration, with elaborate portico ceilings on the posh places and plain on the not so posh.

Of course, the main reason for going to Bologna (for me :-) was the food.  The center of Emila-Romagna, which is the center of foodie Italy.  Here, not far by train, is Parma--as in Prosciutto Parma and Parmesan cheese.  Half-way to Parma is Modena, the center of all Aceto Basalmico, or Basalmic vinegar.  Of which Aceto Basalmico Tradizionale is the apex.  Those who make Aceto Basalmico Tradizionale will, of course, claim that all others are knock-offs and caramel colored water.

Aceto Basalmico Tradizionale is a European DOC made in people's attics.  To date, there are no "factories" that make this.  This balsamic vinegar is made in at least 12 and often in 25 year old varieties (vecchio and extra vecchio).  It is always bottled in the distinctive round-bottomed bottle in 100 milliliter size.  A bottle of extra vecchio (25 year old) Aceto Basalmico Tradizionale runs about 90-100 euro for 100 ml.  But you have to taste it to know that it's worth every euro cent.

To make extra vecchio, requires 25 casks, one for each year of aging.  At the designated time each year, a panel of judges gathers to approve each producer's product.  A producer brings their 12th or 25th year cask and provides a sample to the judges, who taste it and rate it.  If approved, the producer then pours half the contents of the cask into the standardized bottles, corks each, and then applies the DOC stamp over the cork.

The producer then goes back home and fills up the 25 year cask from the 24 year cask, and so on working back to the 1 year cask, which is filled with new grape must.  Since only half of the final year cask is used, you can see that the actual age of the vinegar is well beyond the 25 (or 12) years.  One producer I visited on a previous trip had a set of 25 year casks that had been handed down from mother to daughter (it seems only women produce balsamic vinegar traditionally) over more than 300 years.  So that 25th year cask had some vestige of the vinegar from 300 years ago.  You won't find that in QFC.

Bologna is a city of towers (not quite San Gimignano, but still).  The original leaning tower is in Pisa, not that far away, but Bologna has its own...

The tower on the left leans quite a bit more than it did when I was here 4 years ago.  The foundations are collapsing.  I'm not quite sure what they will do with it; today it is roped off to keep people from going into it (which you used to be able to do--and there was a restaurant inside then, too).

I mentioned the Seven Churches (Sette Chiese), aka Abbazia di Santo Stefano (Abbey of Saint Stephen).  This is a complex of churches that was built up over centuries.  There was, and still is, a natural spring on the site.  Originally, this spring was used by a Roman pagan cult that worshipped Isis (and had reputedly "anointed" the spring with water from the Nile river) around 80-100 C.E.  Around 393 C.E., St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, witnessed the discovery of the first martyrs of Bologna (Vitale and Agricola) and from then on it was a Catholic site centered on religious orders of monks.  Eventually, seven different churches were built on the site, including one that contains a replica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

(You'll have to remove the altar, cross, and railing on top to get a picture of the replica of the Sepulchre).  I bring this up because there is amazing history in Bologna.  it started over 3,000 years ago in the Bronze age, but became more important in the Iron Age as Villanovan culture arose.  Later it took on importance first under the Etruscans and then under the Romans. It is home to the oldest university in the world, founded in 1088 C.E.

But it is surrounded by Emilia-Romagna, the food center of Italy.  And modern Bologna exhibits the bounty of the region everywhere you look.

whether it's the meats,

the vegetables,

the fish,

or the pasta, there is an abundance of raw ingredients that the ubiquitous restaurants combine into some of the most delicious dishes you never imagined.  Of course you can always get pasta Bolognese just about anywhere, but for those who want to explore new combinations, well, the imagination is the limit (and to be honest, at least in my case, some pre-conceived notions of what should and shouldn't be put together on the same plate :-).

In my continuing search for the Tartufo Bianco, of course I found some in both retail and restaurant settings...

But I didn't always have truffles... Here are some standard Bolognese dishes

Tortellini in brodo (with pork filling)

and Guanciale (pork cheeks).  Usually washed down with some form of Sangiovese (or a blend with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, etc.).  In this case, I had a Piemontese white (Roero Arneis).  This is one thing that I have always had trouble getting used to.  Here I am in the middle of Italy with some of the best wines in the world produced not far away.  But most restaurants have very limited wine menus!  In the red wine section, perhaps 5 or 6 wines from Tuscany, 3 or 4 from Piemonte, another 3 or 4 from the Veneto, and a couple from France or the USA.  I would have expected dozens of each, if not hundreds in a huge wine book it would take hours to peruse.  But no, it's very simple.  They have selected those locally produced wines they like and offered them to you.

Of course there's always the Michelin guide restaurants with large cellars (which I've visited from time to time :-).  But there you often get precious food that isn't from the farmer's table that makes Emilia-Romagna what it is.  Fortunately, I can be happy with either or both (especially if the wine is good!).

I also discovered my new favorite Amaro, which is made in Bologna, called Montenegro.  It tastes less like a monk's herbal medicine than many Amaro's and has an orange flavor to it.  I will still head for Fernet Branca after overeating, as occurs at Thanksgiving in the US, for relief from the stuffed and OMG-I-ate-too-much feeling.  In fact, I had some Montenegro tonight after a traditional dinner.  But I'm in Florence now, so that story will have to wait for another post.

Buona notte!