$14.99Food & Tastings
Bologna Audio Walking Tours
Self-guided, narrated walks through Bologna. Buy a tour once, download it, and hear the story at each stop while you walk at your own pace.
Tours from $6.99
Friends walk free. One purchase covers everyone on your walk. Start the tour, invite your friends to join, and it plays on every phone in your group.
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Bologna audio tours
Each tour is a mapped route with narration at every stop. Buy it once and it is yours to keep, no subscription.
$14.99Food & Tastings
$7.99City Highlights
$6.99City HighlightsWhat to expect on a Bologna audio walking tour
A Bologna audio walk keeps you sheltered under the city's famous arcades almost the whole way, whether you're ducking into a covered market for mortadella or peering through a shoebox-sized window at a hidden canal, with narration timed to each stop.
The Bologna Center Walk starts at the Fontana del Nettuno and Piazza Maggiore, Bologna's grand central square beside the unfinished facade of San Petronio, then threads the food stalls of the Quadrilatero before reaching the Two Towers, the city's leaning symbol. It's about 1.8 kilometers, roughly 25 minutes of walking, almost entirely under cover.
The Bologna Canals and University Walk goes north instead, starting at the Gothic church of San Francesco and the tombs of the city's first law professors, then into the Mercato delle Erbe, a covered market still busy with shoppers.
That route continues to a small window in a wall that opens onto a hidden canal, the Canale delle Moline, then on through the university quarter to the Pinacoteca Nazionale, the city's great art gallery. It's about 2.5 kilometers, roughly 33 minutes of walking, and just as sheltered under the arcades.
Where to walk in Bologna
A few of the stops you will pass, and why they are worth slowing down for.
Piazza Maggiore
Piazza Maggiore is the grand central square of Bologna, ringed by medieval and Renaissance palaces that have been the beating heart of the city for eight hundred years. At night the buildings around it light up, the Palazzo del Podesta's bell tower glowing against the dark sky while people still cross the square on bicycles long after the shops have closed. On one side rises the enormous bulk of the Basilica di San Petronio, one of the largest churches in the world and famously left unfinished, its facade marble only across the lower third. By day the square hosts everything from markets to concerts to summer film screenings.
The Quadrilatero
Just east of Piazza Maggiore lies the Quadrilatero, a dense little grid of medieval arcaded lanes that has been the market and food heart of Bologna since the Middle Ages. Weathered brick arches shelter the narrow streets, with names that still recall the old trades, packed with stalls and shops spilling over with the produce that built the city's reputation, mounds of fresh pasta, wheels of parmesan, hanging cured hams and salami. Around midday and in the early evening the lanes fill with people grazing on cold cuts and wine at little counters, the stretch where Bologna's nickname as the Fat really earns itself.
Bologna's porticoes
Nearly forty kilometers of covered arcade line the streets of Bologna, and this stretch, with its old bookshop sign hanging under the vaulted stone, shows exactly why walking here works whatever the weather. The porticoes began as a medieval solution to a housing crunch, upper floors built out over the street on columns to add space without losing the road below, later made a legal requirement for new buildings. You can walk from one end of the old center to the other mostly sheltered from sun or rain, past lamp posts and small shopfronts tucked under the arches, as much a part of Bologna's character as any single monument.
The Two Towers
Seen from above, as in this photo, Bologna's skyline still reads the way it has for centuries, red tiled roofs packed close together with the slim shape of the Due Torri, the Two Towers, rising over them near the old crossroads of the city. In the Middle Ages noble families raced to build towers like these, and the city once had well over a hundred of them, of which only a handful remain. The taller tower, the Asinelli, climbs to nearly a hundred meters, and its worn wooden steps can be climbed for a view back over this same skyline. Its shorter neighbor, the Garisenda, leans at a sharper angle than the tower at Pisa.
Basilica di Santo Stefano
Behind its row of cypress trees stands the Basilica di Santo Stefano, not one church but a cluster of several built up over more than a thousand years, known locally as the Seven Churches. The complex was raised to echo the holy sites of Jerusalem, and wandering inside takes you through a sequence of dim chapels, cloisters and courtyards of different ages. At its heart an octagonal church holds the tomb of Bologna's patron saint, around a calm courtyard with an old stone basin. The sloping triangular square in front, lined with arcades and cafe tables, is one of the gentlest corners of the old center.
Get the Audio Tour in 3 Simple Steps
All in the free Walk With Me app, and the first stops of every tour are free to try.
Tap the Gold Headphones and Pick a Tour
01
Walk It Solo or Invite Someone
02
Press Play and Walk
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Handcrafted for Your Time in the City
These tours aren't a checklist of sights. They're made to be walked slowly, headphones on, eyes on the city.
Meditative and Immersive
Each story is told where it happened. The app chimes when you reach a stop, one tap starts the story, and the stretch between stops is yours to take in at your own pace.
Handcrafted With Care
We choose every route and every stop ourselves and shape each story with care, so the time you have in the city goes to the places most worth seeing.
Better With Someone
Every walk is better with someone beside you, so if you can bring a friend, we really hope you do. That's why one purchase covers everyone you invite: they join your tour free.