Why go
This chapter explains why a historic university city also became a strategic rail and industrial centre. Pair the central streets with a deliberate look at Bologna Centrale or Porta Lame if you want to understand the wartime damage and resistance behind the present city.
The full story
Napoleon's forces entered Bologna in 1796, ending a long period of papal rule. After his fall, the city returned to the Papal States, but uprisings in 1831 and 1848 showed how contested that order had become. Bologna voted to join the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860, shortly before the formation of unified Italy. The city's position between northern and central Italy later made its railway and industrial infrastructure strategically important. During the Second World War, bombing damaged much of the historic centre and hit the station district especially hard. The scars are not always obvious on a casual walk; reconstruction now sits among older fabric. Bologna also became a centre of partisan resistance. Fighting around Porta Lame in November 1944 was one of its best-known urban confrontations, and resistance forces entered the city as German troops withdrew in April 1945. The station area and Porta Lame make useful geographic reference points for this history. They deserve a different kind of attention from the medieval towers: look for how a working city was damaged, defended and rebuilt.