Piazza Maggiore is where the Bolognese go when they want to say things loudly.  The evening we arrived, we strolled across the wide stone-tiled square and took in the sights. At one end was the looming basilica of San Petronio, its facade curiously unfinished. Only the bottom of the impressive church has white marble skin, the rest is all brown brick. Perhaps, the financiers differed in their aesthetic vision, or maybe just ran out of money in the many hundred years it took to complete this church.

A small crowd was gathering, eager to revel and waving flags. Talking to one of the young stewards, we find out that the local football club has qualified for some major league for the first time. Ah! A nice slice of local culture we thought. 

We then wander out of the piazza and enter the narrow lanes of the so-called old market. It’s been running since the Middle Ages and now is lined with racks of fancy cheese and curing hunks of ham. I am schooled by a seller who dismisses our innocent request for parmesan and insists that parmesan is a fake American name. Parmiggianno, it must be called, with a suitable Marlon brando like slur. The cheese is aged anywhere from a year to

After a serviceable dinner, in which we try to not miss Greek food too much, we begin to head back to our home across the Piazza Maggiore. A smattering of football fans has transformed into a seething block of humanity in a few hours. There is synchronized chanting and much flag waving. We try to find a way through. The stewards manage to keep a small line open. I pick up Arjun and we try to thread through the mass.  Everyone is well behaved and even the jumping is nothing too crazy. After a nervous ten minutes, we emerge at the other end in a single file. 

Perhaps we got a bigger slice of local culture than what we expected. The party goes on into the night.

The next morning is bright and sunny. Last night’s revelry has left no hangovers. We admire the famous porticoes of Bologna. The edge opposite the basilica is fringed by a long line of fat columns that hold up brick arches. Sometimes the ceiling is ribbed and at other times, it’s a bunch of curving quarter domes. We discover that under one of these arches, there is a nook where you can talk into the bricks. Magically your voice bounces off in high fidelity into another corner. 

These porticoes have an interesting history. In the middle ages, the denizens of the upper floor began adding some extra carpet area to their homes, by building these extensions that were propped up by rough wooden beams. The city council reacted to these building code violations rather ingeniously. They decreed that you could extend your private homes at the top, but the space below must remain public.  

Another crowd is gathering today. They wave red flags and are obviously not partying. After much back and forth it emerges that they are a group of teachers and health workers who are demanding a better deal from the government. We have representatives from both professions and wish we had some red flags to wave too.

A rather big-arsed statue of Neptune looks at the gathering dissenters. At his feet are a bunch of damsel types with water pouring out of their breasts. I wonder what the ancient popes made of all this naked pagan worshipping right at their doorsteps. 

We enter the basilica and spend some time in holy reverence. Large circular windows high up in the walls let in the streaming sun. On the floor is a slanting long line of light-colored tiles that stand out on the otherwise red floor. Around noon, every day the sun shines through a small hole high up in the walls, and the ellipse of light cast on the line marks the passage of the seasons. During summer, the disc is circular and closer to one end of the church. During winter, the elongated ellipse gets pushed to the other side. 

Cassini, the astronomer who discovered the moons of Saturn also engineered this device.  Just a few decades after Galileo was forced to take back his heretical ideas about how the earth moved around the Sun, Cassini would use this device to verify Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. The meridian line has to run North-South and the astronomer worked hard to find out where to drill the hole high up in the walls so that the line runs clear of all the pillars. 

It’s something to ponder about. Cassini must have been a very persuasive man to convince the Church to use its property to build this astronomical device. 

There is other interesting stuff in one of the side chapels, fenced off by a velvety rope. A suitably scary fresco of what hell looks like. A giant black Lucifer is gobbling up sinners, who are missing important body parts. A prophet of a rival monotheistic faith is chief amongst the sinners, and this has led to the church being on the hit list of ISIS and the like for some years. We only paid  5 euros to take a sneak peek into Hell.