Portico overlooking Piazza Santo Stefano — Bologna, Italy.

Decorative medallion on one of the buildings in Piazza Santo Stefano — Bologna, Italy.

A beautiful door-within-a-door — Bologna, Italy.

Piazzetta and Basilica dei servi di Maria — Bologna, Italy.

Basilica Santuario di Santo Stefano ... the story of our visit in the next footprint — Bologna.

Street art or graffiti? — Bologna, Italy.

Mural on the way to lunch — Bologna, Italy.

Trattoria Leonida is on a quiet street near Piazza Santo Stefano — Bologna, Italy.

It's just a tad chilly to sit outside — Bologna, Italy.

Cozy dining room at Trattoria Leonida — Bologna, Italy.

Delicious food @ Trattoria Leonida — Bologna, Italy.

Delicious gelato @ Cremeria la Vecchia Stalla — Bologna, Italy.

I love the old doors in Centro Storico — Bologna, Italy.

Exploring Santo Stefano

October 22, 2025 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 59 °F

With no showings on the calendar for today, we took it easy this morning … meaning that we stayed in and did our chores … laundry, cleaning the apartment. You get the idea.

Around 11:00a, our chores completed, I suggested that we go out for a walk and check out the location of the Piazza Santo Stefano apartment that we’ll be seeing tomorrow. Along the way, we detoured to check out the AirBNB we’ll be moving to for the last few days of our Bologna stay.

Our meandering walk eventually took us to Basilica Santuario di Santo Stefano. We decided to check it out … but I’ll write about it separately.

We ended up splitting our basilica visit into two parts due to timing. In between, we grabbed lunch at Trattoria Leonida … on a quiet side street not too far from Piazza Santo Stefano … a nice, intimate, white-tablecloths-on-the-table kind of place that felt like it was eons away from the hub-bub of the busy piazza. The menu was in Italian only … the price of the tagliatelle al ragù consistent with the ‘local-eatery’ pricing. Perfect.

I had a ragù of sorts … the house specialty … Cordonetti a la Leonida. Google described it as a dish consisting of “short, narrow tagliatelle with a Parma ham ragù.” It was delicious. Mui was equally pleased with the Polpettone di vitello con salsa verde that he ordered — a veal meatloaf with a green sauce … for want of a better description. This trattoria is known for only serving vegetables that are in season … artichokes boiled with spices was on the menu today, so we added that to our order … an excellent choice.

To kill time until the museum opened, we headed to Cremeria la Vecchia Stalla for gelato. OMG! No wonder there seems to always be long lines here. Our timing was good, however, and we beat the group that showed up after us.

Once we completed the museum portion of our basilica visit, we returned to the AirBNB for a relaxing afternoon and evening.

We have a showing tomorrow morning and a free afternoon to do a bit more sightseeing. Maybe a museum? We’ll see.Read more