The heart of Bologna is the Piazza Maggiore. As our guide book sez: it's like a cultured old woman in galoshes and a tatty brown coat with hair that hasn't been combed in years. That said, it's big, medieval, and impressive.
All this walking around made us hungry, so we ventured to Osteria Bottega, which we were told has the best lasagna in all of Italy. Sadly, they weren't serving lasagna for lunch. No bother at all - what we ordered was deee-licious!
At one end of the square is the 1546 statue of Neptune, commissioned by Pope IV and designed by Tommaso Laureti. Where, as the Bolognese say, the sea god 'abandoned the fishes to make friends with the pigeons.'
At the base are some rather pervy mermaids.
In the adjacent city hall building, we got a better view of the Piazza.
Just off this Piazza is the stock exchange that houses (in the basement) the excavated ruins of a 2 century Roman Forum. Roman forums are where official acts were settled like municipal matters, judicial affairs, and where Jesus would have fought the lions, had he fought lions and had this been a coliseum (that last bit was for Rick Steves fans 😉)
We "wandered" the area and here are some of the sights.
During lunch the rain started up, so we lingered over dolce, espresso and cappuccino.
Part 2 of today shortly!
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