Europe's Most Beautiful Historic University Building
Anatomical Theater • 6,000 Coats of Arms • Medieval Library • Student Heritage
Explore the Palace Get Early AccessSat 10am-7pm, Sun closed
Stunning 1637 wood-carved amphitheater where human dissections were performed
Free first Sunday of month
Former university library with incredible frescoed ceiling and wall decorations
Unified university campus
Historic reading rooms with 800,000 volumes including medieval manuscripts
5 min from Piazza Maggiore
Portraits of famous scholars and elaborate heraldic decorations
Over 6,000 heraldic emblems of students and professors from 1563-1865
139-meter courtyard with 30 arches on two levels
Latin tributes to professors covering walls and ceilings
17th-century astronomical sundial in the main courtyard
Oldest university in continuous operation in the Western world
Dante, Petrarch, Copernicus, and 3 popes studied here
Became National Institute of Sciences under Napoleon
Destroyed 1944, meticulously reconstructed 1945-1950
Two "spellati" (skinned men) sculptures hold the professor's canopy
Anatomical theater ceiling shows astrological influence on medicine
Central statue represents Apollo, god of medicine, with healing herbs
Connecting corridors allowed professors to move between lecture halls unseen
Regular evening concerts in Stabat Mater Hall
Public lectures on history, science, and culture
University still holds special ceremonies here
Rotating displays of manuscripts and university artifacts
The university's Renaissance palace — corridors armored in six thousand student coats of arms, and upstairs the spellbinding Anatomical Theatre, all carved spruce and marble slab. Ten minutes from Piazza Maggiore, three centuries deep.
Built in 1563 to gather the scattered law and arts schools under one roof — some say to keep an unruly university under papal eyes — it served until Napoleon, then became the city library.
A 1944 bomb collapsed the Anatomical Theatre; it was rebuilt piece by original piece from the rubble, including the flayed-man 'Spellati' statues that flank the reader's chair. The dissection slab is marble for reasons the squeamish can infer.
Bologna's cathedral, and the tower-within-a-tower almost nobody climbs
Bologna's Grand Medieval Square
Alma Mater Studiorum - Since 1088
Walking Through 40km of Covered Medieval Arcades
Medieval Skyscrapers Since 1109
Bologna's Bronze Giant
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