Piazza Maggiore & Basilica di San Petronio

Piazza Maggiore has been Bologna's civic centre since the medieval commune first laid it out, and it remains closed to through traffic today, functioning less as a monument than as the city's actual living room — Bolognese cross it constantly rather than visiting it as a destination. The square is framed by the Palazzo d'Accursio, the Palazzo del Podestà and the basilica itself.

San Petronio was begun in 1390 with plans ambitious enough to have surpassed St Peter's Basilica in Rome — plans the city's own authorities and, later, papal politics ensured were never realised. The result is a facade still half rendered in raw brick and half faced in marble, an unfinished state that has lasted over six centuries and become part of the building's identity. Inside runs a 67-metre meridian line laid out by the astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini in 1655, still precise enough that a beam of sunlight through a small roof aperture marks true local noon.