Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio

What is it that they say about April showers? They bring May flowers? Yeah, that’s it. We’ll see when the next month comes around how true that is.

In the meantime, our beautiful blue-sky days have disappeared. It’s been raining since Monday … on and off and then pretty much all day today. There’s another day of the wet stuff forecasted for tomorrow … and then it should clear up for a few days before the rain makes another appearance.

No worries on our part. We found things to do, though we did have to break out the rain gear and our puffy jackets as the temps have dropped, too.

One of the places we’ve been meaning to visit is the very first building that was constructed as the seat of the University of Bologna … located in the heart of the city and about a 5-minute walk from our apartment. Today, the palace houses the public library, which was founded in 1801 and relocated here from the Convent of San Domenico in 1838.

The library’s initial collection of books came from religious organizations that were disbanded during the Napoleonic age, and later by the Kingdom of Italy. That collection grew through donations made over subsequent years and are stored on shelves that fill what used to be university classrooms. The former great hall/auditorium of the ‘artists’ serves as the reading room. Though open to the public for research and reading, this part of the palazzo is closed for tourist visits.

You can go in for a wander around the courtyard and parts of the first floor of the Archiginnasio on your own … free of charge. But if you want to see inside some of the rooms, you need to make an online reservation for either a guided tour or an audio guide. Both get you into two of the four special rooms. But if you want to see all four rooms, you have to book the guided tour. So, we opted for that one … €10 for 65+ … but just €7 with the Card Cultura discount.

The palazzo was built over a period of just one year …. between 1562-1563 … on the orders of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was the Papal Legate of Bologna, and his deputy, Pier Donato Cesi. It was their intention to have a single location for the university, which heretofore had been dispersed around the city. That this would allow them to control the teachings and make sure the content was church-sanctioned was the underlying idea. (By the way, today’s university is dispersed all over the city.)

The classrooms were built overlooking a two-story arched portico. Everywhere you look — inside and out — the walls, the ceilings, the staircases are all embellished with sculpted or painted coats of arms and memorials that were added through the ages … of the masters, the supporters, and the students. Of the 7,000 coats of arms that once adorned the palazzo, only 6,000 have survived … making it the “…largest existing heraldic wall complex … .” Quite frankly, it was all a bit mind boggling.

Although our tour wasn’t until 5:10p, we arrived at the palazzo shortly after 4:00p so that I could take photos in the courtyard and hallways before we joined our guide. The rain lifted while we were in the courtyard, which was a blessing on what was an otherwise dull-lit, overcast afternoon.

Hoping for a smaller group, we had opted for the last English tour of the day. We got our wish … just 15 of us instead of the usual 30 people that make up a group.

Our guide, Maurizio, started out by saying that we must have heard that the University of Bologna was the oldest in continuous operation … with teaching beginning around 1088. In the next breath, he continued … “It’s a lie.” True enough … in the sense that until the palazzo was built in the late 16th century, there wasn’t a campus per se, nor formal classes as we understand them. Instead, individual students would approach teachers of their choice and ask for lessons … sometimes on the sly, if they wanted to study topics or theories that were not church-sanctioned.

Maurizio explained that the building, including the two grand staircases that lead from either side of the courtyard to the first floor, was divided in half … one side for the “Legisti” (law students) and the other side for the “Artists” (students of all of the other fields … philosophy, sciences, math, etc).

Leading us downstairs from the meeting point on the first floor, Maurizio pointed out several of the coats of arms that were of special significance, including one for a student from Peru who somehow managed to make his way to Bologna to study at the university … “the first ‘American’ student” here. It was here that we learned why some coats of arms were missing embellishments. The story goes that if a student got in trouble and was dismissed from the university, the face of his coat of arms would be painted over.

Our next stop was one of the two rooms accessible only with the guided tour … the Chapel of Santa Maria dei Bulgari … where students attended services.

Once decorated with frescoes that told the story of the life of the Virgin — painted by Bartolomeo Cesi — today only fragments remain of the paintings … and the ceiling is new, too. Turns out that during WWII aerial bombardment runs, a bomb missed its target — the train station — and fell here.

From the chapel, we walked next door to the second guided-tours-only room … the Cubiculum Artistarum … a classroom dedicated to the Artists and the teaching of liberal arts. Here, too, only fragments of the frescoes that decorated the walls remain. Today, the room serves as the headquarters of the Agrarian Society (aka Academy of Agriculture).

Going back upstairs, our next stop was the Teatro Anatomico.

Yes, you guessed it … the Anatomy Theater. Named for its auditorium-style seating, this was the room where lessons in anatomy were conducted, including the dissection of cadavers provided by the nearby hospital morgue! (The rumor that cadavers came from cemeteries is apparently untrue.)

Dating back to 1637, the theater was practically destroyed during the aerial bombings of WWII, but luckily the statues of history’s great physicians and the greatest anatomists of the Bolognese school survived and were placed back in the niches after the restoration work that followed the original design was completed.

The room was fascinating in many ways — not the least of which was the brilliant white Carrara marble dissection table in the middle of the room … the sixth one since the original one was put there; the coffered ceiling with signs of the zodiac … which ties into the ancient tradition of consulting the stars before medical procedures; and the baldachin held up by statues of “spellati” (skinned men), and topped with a female figure, the allegory of anatomy, receiving from a putto a femur in lieu of a flower.

The tour was to have ended in the Stabat Mater Hall. Unfortunately, we found the door locked and the attendant gone when we arrived shortly after 6:00p … a planning error on Mauricio’s part. No matter, our tour ticket allowed us to return within a week to view the room since it is often unavailable for visiting due to scheduled events. We didn’t let grass grow under our feet, so to speak, and returned to visit the room today.

The Stabat Mater Hall, named for the first performance of Rossini’s music by the same name — directed by Donizetti here in 1842 — is the other auditorium of the university … this one for the law students.

Just WOW! It seemed like every inch of the walls above the bookcases lining the perimeter were filled with paintings of coats of arms … some, like the one depicting the double-headed eagle of the Hapsburg, standing out in size and detail. On one wall, a door with a locked wrought iron gate gave us a chance to peek into one of the rooms where the library collection is stored … the door at the other end leading to the remaining series of former classrooms with shelf after shelf filled with a dizzying number of books. Just amazing.

This footprint, as often happens, went longer than I intended when I sat down to write it … and there is still so much more I could add. Instead, here’s a link to the website where there’s more detailed information for those interested … https://www.archiginnasio.it/lang/en/visita-l-a….)

Card Cultura Update: With today’s €3 discount, I have just one €1 left to break even; Mui is still €3 behind me 😊.)Læs mere