Italy, July 2008
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The University of Bologna was hosting the 2008 meeting of the
International Society for Human Ethology (ISHE). Bologna is called ‘the
fat one’ because it is considered the culinary capital of Italy as well as
‘the red one’ both because of the red brick buildings and the leftist
politics. Speaking of politics, here is the city hall.
Inside the city hall are several small museums. The wall are decorated
with frescoes.
When Napoleon invaded, he removed tributes and statues to his rival the
pope. The citizens changed the caption above this statue so it looked like
it was honoring a saint (dressed up like the pope, nonetheless). The ruse
worked and the statue was left in place.
The Basilica di San Petronio was designed to be the largest church in the
world, even larger than St. Peter’s in Rome. The pope (Pius IV) prevented
this from happening by building a university in the way, so it only became
the world’s fifth largest basilica. Then the project went over budget and
the city ran out of money, so the marble façade was never completed.
Here is a model of how the church would have looked when it was
complete.
The basilica’s reliquary is very well stocked.
Pope Gregory, of Gregorian calendar fame, had the world’s largest sundial
installed on the church floor. It helped with his time keeping
experiments.
The University of Bologna was founded in 1088 by a group of youths who
decided to become students and went looking for someone to teach them.
What a great idea, eh? The original university was decentralized, but the
pope decided to build a facility that would bring all of the professors
together (so they would be easier to watch over, of course). Here is the
building the pope had built.
In the courtyard you can see the many family crests, thought to be the
most numerous on one building in the world.
The anatomical theatre held many dissections under the watchful eyes of a
papal representative (he was probably there to make sure that they didn’t
go looking for the soul).
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