History can be right before your eyes, yet you can easily miss it. When traveling to a place like Bologna, Italy, it’s easy to admire the architecture simply for its beauty. But the arches, porticos, and towers all have stories behind them. The why and how behind their construction is lost to visitors wandering the streets, taking in the smells of Parma ham and prosciutto, unless you have someone to guide you through the history.
We booked a walking tour for our second day in Bologna, meeting in the town square that we’d walked through the previous day. I remembered admiring the church’s exterior and the contrast between the two halves, the bottom covered in rose and white marble while the top half looked more rustic, with brown bricks completing the church’s structure.
On our tour we learned there was so much more to Basilica di San Petronio than we could’ve ever known. In 1538, Giacomo Ranuzzi started covering the church in marble, but never finished the project. Since that time, many artists have designed different ways to finish the church, but it still sits unfinished hundreds of years later.
And that’s not the only plans that were left unfulfilled. Antonio Di Vincenzo, the first architect on the project, wanted the final build to take on the shape of the cross. But word on the street is the Pope didn’t want the church to exceed the size of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, so he had the Archiginnasio Library built next door, leaving very little room for the additional wing. Despite this detour in plans, San Petronio is still the fifth largest church in the world.
I walked away from that tour realizing how my simple observation upon seeing it for the first time could not even encompass the many hopes for this project and then the disappointment of those plans going awry. Instead, I saw a beautiful, towering church and turned my attention to what I would eat for dinner. Definitely Parma ham and prosciutto.
Words + Photoby Stephanie Grant