Walking Bologna’s Porticoes: Three Routes Through the Sheltered Streets

Walking Bologna’s porticoes is not a single route — it is a way of moving through the city. Once you understand that almost every major street has a covered walkway alongside it, you stop thinking of the porticoes as a destination and start using them the way Bolognesi do: as the default path between anywhere and anywhere else. This guide covers three walks of different lengths and characters, starting from Piazza Maggiore and moving outward.

Walk 1: The Centre (45 minutes)

Start at the Portico del Pavaglione on the eastern side of Piazza Maggiore — the wide Renaissance arcade under Palazzo dei Banchi, with its Corinthian columns and fossil-embedded floor. Walk south along Via dell’Archiginnasio to Piazza Galvani. The Archiginnasio is on your left; step into the courtyard if it’s open — the walls are covered floor to ceiling in heraldic crests of students and professors going back to the 16th century.

From Piazza Galvani, take Via Farini east. The portico here changes character immediately — narrower, older, less polished than the Pavaglione, with the kind of shopfronts that suggest the street has been doing roughly the same thing for several centuries. Turn left onto Strada Maggiore. This is one of the finest portico streets in the city: wide, high-ceilinged, with a sequence of palazzo facades that vary noticeably from one to the next — medieval, Renaissance, Baroque — all joined at ground level by the continuous covered walkway. Walk it as far as the church of Santa Maria dei Servi, about 500 metres, then double back.

Walk 2: The University Quarter (1 hour)

From the Due Torri, head northeast along Via Zamboni. This is the spine of the university district and the porticoes here feel different from the centre — lower, darker in places, with bicycles locked to every available column and students moving in both directions at pace. The porticoes in this quarter date largely from the medieval expansion of the city around the Studium, when the demand for housing drove buildings upward and outward over the street. Some of the wooden originals were replaced in brick as early as the 13th century; others came later but kept the same compressed proportions.

Continue on Via Zamboni past the Teatro Comunale and the Accademia di Belle Arti. At the end, loop back via Via delle Belle Arti and Via Oberdan — quieter streets with long unbroken portico runs and almost no tourist traffic. This is where you see what the porticoes are for on an ordinary afternoon: children on scooters, an elderly couple with shopping bags, a bar with three tables pushed out to the edge of the arcade. The portico as extension of private space into the public realm, which is exactly what it has always been.

Walk 3: Via Saragozza to San Luca (half day)

This one is in a different category. From Porta Saragozza — the old city gate at the end of Via Saragozza, about 20 minutes’ walk southwest from Piazza Maggiore — the Portico di San Luca begins. It runs for 3.5 kilometres and 666 arches up the hill to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, built between 1674 and 1793 to shelter the annual religious procession that carries the Madonna’s icon down to the city. The arches are terracotta red; the path climbs steadily with the city dropping away behind you as you go. Walking up takes 40–45 minutes. The views from the top over Bologna’s terracotta roofline and the plain of the Po Valley are worth it on a clear day.

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The practical note: there is no shade on the San Luca portico in summer — the arches face south and the stone heats up. Go early in the morning or in autumn. The sanctuary at the top is free to enter. Buses run back to the centre from the bottom of the hill if the return walk is not appealing.