Spend a weekend in Bologna and you will hear the same three nicknames again and again: La Grassa, La Dotta and La Rossa. The Fat, the Learned and the Red. Each one captures a side of the city that locals have been celebrating for centuries, and together they explain why Bologna feels different from every other Italian capital of food, culture or politics.
La Grassa: A City Built on Food
Bologna earned the nickname “La Grassa” thanks to the richness of its kitchen. The flatlands of Emilia-Romagna have always produced extraordinary raw materials: soft wheat for fresh pasta, pigs for cured meats, cows for Parmigiano, the climate for balsamic vinegar in nearby Modena. The city collected, refined and exported all of it.
That is why tagliatelle al ragu, tortellini in brodo, mortadella, lasagne verdi and crescentine are all “from Bologna”. They are the products of a place where food was never an afterthought but the engine of trade and identity. Walk through the old food district and you can still see butchers, cheese shops and pasta makers working on the same streets they have occupied since the Middle Ages.
La Dotta: Home of the Oldest University in the Western World
“La Dotta” means “the Learned”, and Bologna has the academic credentials to back it up. The University of Bologna was founded in 1088, making it the oldest continuously operating university in the Western world. Dante studied here. So did Petrarch, Copernicus and Erasmus.
The student population still shapes the city today. The historic center is dense with libraries, bookshops, cheap eateries and aperitivo bars built around academic life. The famous porticoes, more than 60 kilometres of covered walkways protected by UNESCO since 2021, were partly built to let students and professors move between buildings under any weather.
La Rossa: Politics, Brick and Terracotta Roofs
“La Rossa” has two meanings, and Bolognesi will tell you both with the same pride.
The first is visual. Climb the Asinelli Tower at sunset and the city below glows in shades of red: brick walls, terracotta tiles, ochre plaster. After the Second World War, when most of the historic center was being restored, urban planners codified the use of warm reds and ochres to keep the skyline coherent.
The second meaning is political. Bologna has long been associated with left-wing politics, cooperative movements and progressive city governance. From the postwar decades through to today, it has been a stronghold of the Italian left and a laboratory for public housing, public transport and cultural policy. For many Italians, “Bologna la Rossa” is a political identity as much as an aesthetic one.
Three Cities in One
The three nicknames do not contradict each other. The university produced the wealth and the bookshops; the food economy fed the students; the politics shaped the city that protected both. When you walk Bologna for the first time, the porticoes carry you between all three at once: a butcher under one arch, a 14th century library under the next, a left-wing bar with cheap wine under the third.
That overlap is the real reason Bologna stays in your memory after one visit. It is not just “the food city” or “the university town”. It is all of them in the same square kilometre, and the locals make sure you notice.
