Overshadowing even the cathedral, the octagonal pink-marble baptistery on the south side of the piazza is one of the most important such structures in…
Must see attractions in Emilia-Romagna
- Top ChoiceBattistero
- Top ChoiceBasilica di San Vitale
Sometimes, after weeks of strolling around dark Italian churches, you can lose your sense of wonder. Not here! The lucid mosaics that adorn the altar of…
- Top ChoiceBasilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo
An old legend states that Pope Gregory the Great once ordered the Apollinare's mosaics to be blackened as they were distracting worshippers from prayer. A…
- Top ChoiceVia degli Asini
Hidden behind a colourful patchwork of warped homes, this low-slung, wood-beamed, delightfully uneven medieval walkway dates to 1290. It's unique in Italy…
- Top ChoiceMausoleo di Galla Placidia
In the same complex as Basilica di San Vitale, the small but equally incandescent Mausoleo di Galla Placidia was constructed for Galla Placidia, the half…
- MTop ChoiceMuseu Horacio Pagani
If peeking at the assembly lines at Ferrari and Lamborghini is like glimpsing inside a well-oiled machine, a day behind the scenes at Pagani is like…
- Top ChoiceCastello Estense
Complete with moat and drawbridge, Ferrara's towering castle was commissioned by Nicolò II d'Este in 1385. Initially it was intended to protect him and…
- Top ChoiceBasilica di Santo Stefano
Bologna's most unique religious site is this atmospheric labyrinth of interlocking ecclesiastical structures, whose architecture spans centuries of…
- Top ChoiceBasilica di San Petronio
Bologna's hulking Gothic basilica is Europe's sixth-largest church, measuring 132m by 66m by 47m. Work began on it in 1390, but it was never finished, and…
- Top ChoiceBasilica di Sant'Apollinare in Classe
This signature early Christian basilica, lighter than Ravenna's other churches, is situated 5km southeast of town in the former Roman port of Classe. Its…
- LTop ChoiceLa Rocchetta Mattei
You'll find one of Emilia-Romagna's most fascinating and curious sights at this captivating hilltop castle 50km southwest of Bologna. La Rocchetta Mattei…
- Top ChoiceDuomo
Another daring Romanesque beauty? Well, yes and no. Consecrated in 1106, Parma has a classic Lombard-Romanesque facade, but inside, the gilded pulpit and…
- MTop ChoiceMuseo Nazionale dell'Ebraismo Italiano e della Shoah
Born by an Italian Parliamentary decree to create a National Holocaust Museum, the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah partially opened in…
- CTop ChoiceCasa di Lucio Dalla
The 15th-century Palazzo Casa Fontana poi Gamberini – the fascinating, pricier-than-the-Colosseum home of eccentric Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla …
- MTop ChoiceMuseo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna
This mouthful of a museum inside Palazzo Sanguinetti – the former home of Napoleon's Italian minister – chronicles six centuries of European musical…
- MTop ChoiceMuseo Ferrari
Each year, hundreds of thousands of petrolheads make the pilgrimage to this museum in Maranello, Ferrari's home town. They come here to obsess over the…
- DTop ChoiceDuomo
Modena's celebrated duomo combines the austerity of the Dark Ages with throwback traditions from the Romans in a style known as Romanesque. The church…
- LTop ChoiceLabirinto della Masone
The opening of the world's largest maze in 2015 fulfilled a lifetime dream of art publisher Franco Maria Ricci, who once published what many considered to…
- MTop ChoiceMuseo Archeologico Nazionale
Housed within what is arguably Ferrara's most beautifully preserved palace – the 1505 Palazzo Costabili – the city's national archaeological museum is…
- RTop ChoiceRocca di Brisighella
Standing sentinel high above town on a gypsum hilltop, this medieval fortress, along with the Torre dell'Orologio and Santuario del Monticino on…