Italy tour in bologna

Bologna (Italian pronunciation: [boˈloɲːa], from the Latin Bononia, Bulåggna IPA: [buˈlʌɲːa] in Bolognese dialect) is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley (Pianura Padana in Italian) of northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River.

Home to the oldest university in the Western world, University of Bologna, founded in 1088, Bologna is one of the most developed cities in Italy. Bologna often ranks as one of the top cities, in terms of quality of life in Italy: it was ranked 5th in 2006, and 12th in 2007, out of 103 Italian cities. This is due to its strong industrial tradition, its wide range of highly-developed social services, and its physical location at the crossing-point of the most important highways and railways in the country.

The Basilica of San Petronio is the main church of Bologna, the old città d'arte in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy; however, it is not the metropolitan cathedral of the city, which is the Cathedral of Saint Peter. It dominates the Piazza Maggiore. It is the fifth largest church in the world, stretching for 132 meters in length and 60 in width, while the vault reaches 45 meters inside and 51 meters in the facade. It can contain about 28,000 persons.

It is dedicated to the patron saint of the city, Saint Petronius, who was the bishop of Bologna in the fifth century. Following a council decree of 1388, the first stone of construction was laid June 7, 1390, when the town council entrusted Antonio di Vincenzo with raising a Gothic cathedral.

Works lasted for several centuries: after the completion of the first version of the facade, in 1393 the first pair of side chapels were begun. The series were completed only in 1479. However, in 1514 Arduino degli Arriguzzi proposed a revised plan in the form of a Latin cross with the intent to outdo even Saint Peter's Basilica of Rome, the greatest church of the Western Christian world even in its ancient version. By tradition Pope Pius IV halted such a majestic project.

In spite of this setback the basilica continued to enjoy the great prestige it engendered from the very beginning: pope Clement VII chose it for the coronation of Charles V in 1530. Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola was chief architect of the fabbrica; his is the design of the ciborium over the altar. The vaulting and decoration of the central nave is by Girolamo Rainaldi, who completed it in 1646-1658.

The facing of the main facade, however, remains unfinished: many architects (notably Baldassarre Peruzzi, Vignola, Andrea Palladio and Alberto Alberti) were commissioned to propose solutions for it, but a definitive one was never found. Jacopo della Quercia of Siena enriched the main doorway with sculptures (illustrated, left) and two new small flanking doorways, with subjects taken from the Old Testament, forming a traditional prelude to the new dispensation that is represented by the basilica itself. The heroic nudes of Adam and other figures in the rectangular bas-relief panels were an inspiration to artists of the Renaissance.