Bologna

The Basilica of San Petronio is the main church of Bologna, Emilia Romagna, northern Italy. It dominates the Piazza Maggiore. It is the sixth largest... church in the world, stretching for 132 meters in length and 60 meters in width, while the vault reaches 45 meters inside and 51 meters in the facade. It can contain about 28,000 persons. The basilica is dedicated to the patron saint of the city, Saint Petronius, who was the bishop of Bologna in the fifth century. The construction was a communal project of Bologna, not of the bishops: The property was a symbol of communal power that was not transferred from the city to the diocese until 1929; the basilica was finally consecrated in 1954. It has been the seat of the relics of Bologna's patron saint only since 2000; until then they were preserved in the Santo Stefano church of Bologna. Following a council decree of 1388, the first stone of construction was laid June 7, 1390, when the town council entrusted Antonio di Vincenzo with raising a Gothic cathedral. Works lasted for several centuries: after the completion of the first version of the facade, in 1393 the first pair of side chapels were begun.
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The Basilica of San Domenico is one of the major churches in Bologna, Italy. The remains of Saint Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers , are... buried inside the exquisite shrine Arca di San Domenico, made by Nicola Pisano and his workshop, Arnolfo di Cambio and with later additions by Niccolò dell'Arca and the young Michelangelo. Dominic Guzman, on arriving in Bologna in January 1218, was impressed by the vitality of the city and quickly recognized the importance of this university town to his evangelizing mission. A convent was established at the Mascarella church by the Blessed Reginald of Orléans. As this convent soon became too small for their increasing number, the preaching Brothers moved in 1219 to the small church of San Nicolò of the Vineyards at the outskirts of Bologna. St. Dominic settled in this church and held here the first two General Chapters of the order . Saint Dominic died in this church on 6 August 1221. He was buried behind the altar of San Nicolò. Between 1219 and 1243 the Dominicans bought all surrounding plots of land around the church.
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The Towers of Bologna are a group of medieval structures in Bologna, Italy. The two most prominent ones, also called the Two Towers, are the landmark... of the city. Between the 12th and the 13th century, the number of towers in the city was very high, possibly up to 180 . The reasons for the construction of so many towers are not clear. One hypothesis is that the richest families used them for offensive/defensive purposes during the period of the Investiture Controversy. Besides the towers, one can still see some fortified gateways that correspond to the gates of the 12th-century city wall , which itself has been almost completely destroyed. During the 13th century, many towers were taken down or demolished, and others simply collapsed. Many towers have subsequently been utilized in one way or the other: as prison, city tower, shop or residential building. The last demolitions took place during the 20th century, according to an ambitious, but retrospectively unfortunate, restructuring plan for the city. The Artenisi Tower and the Riccadonna Tower at the Mercato di mezzo were demolished in 1917.
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The Fountain of Neptune is a monumental civic fountain located in the eponymous square, Piazza Nettuno, next to Piazza Maggiore, in Bologna, Italy... Its bronze figure of Neptune, extending his reach in a lordly gesture of stilling and controlling the waters, is an early work of Giambologna's maturity, completed about 1567. An innovation of Giambologna's fountain designs is the fantastic and non-geometrical forms he gave to the basins into which water splashed and flowed, "curiously folded, bulging and elastic in form", as Rosalind Grippi remarked. The fountain is a model example of Mannerist taste of the courtly elite in the mid-sixteenth century: construction of the statue was commissioned by the Cardinal Legate of the city, Charles Borromeo, to symbolize the fortunate recent election of Borromeo's uncle as Pope Pius IV. The work was designed by the Palermitan architect Tommaso Laureti in 1563, with an over-lifesize bronze of the god Neptune on the top, executed by Giambologna, who had submitted a model for the fountain of Neptune in Florence, but had lost the commission to Baccio Bandinelli.
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Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher,... linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure. He demonstrated a unique and extraordinary cultural versatility, becoming a highly controversial figure in the process. Pasolini was born in Bologna, traditionally one of the most leftist of Italian cities. He was the son of a lieutenant of the Italian Army, Carlo Alberto, who had become famous for saving Benito Mussolini's life during Anteo Zamboni's assassination attempt, and subsequently married an elementary school teacher, Susanna Colussi, in 1921. Pasolini was born in 1922 and was named after his paternal uncle. His family moved to Conegliano in 1923 and, two years later, to Belluno, where another son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini's father was arrested for gambling debts, and his mother took the children to her family's house in Casarsa della Delizia, in the Friuli region. Pasolini began writing poems at the age of seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa.
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Giovanni Battista Martini , also known as Padre Martini, was an Italian musician. Martini was born at Bologna. His father, Antonio Maria Martini, a... violinist, taught him the elements of music and the violin; later he learned singing and harpsichord playing from Padre Pradieri, and counterpoint from Antonio Riccieri and Giacomo Antonio Perti. Having received his education in classics from the fathers of the oratory of San Filippo Neri, he afterwards entered upon a noviciate at the Franciscan monastery at Lago, at the close of which he was received as a Minorite on September 11, 1722. In 1725, though only nineteen years old, he received the appointment of chapel-master in the Franciscan church at Bologna, where his compositions attracted attention. At the invitation of amateurs and professional friends he opened a school of composition at which several celebrated musicians were trained; as a teacher he consistently declared his preference for the traditions of the old Roman school of composition. Padre Martini was a zealous collector of musical literature, and possessed an extensive musical library.
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Giorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual. Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous... Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico , brother Paolo, and sister Jenny. In 1934 he completed his studies at his secondary school, the liceo classico L. Ariosto in Ferrara. Music had been his first great passion and he considered a career as a pianist; however literature soon became the focus of his artistic interests. In 1935 he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bologna. Commuting to lectures by train from Ferrara, he studied under the art historian Roberto Longhi. His ideal of the “free intellectual” was the Liberal historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce. Despite the anti-Semitic race laws which were introduced from 1938, he was able to graduate in 1939, writing a thesis on the nineteenth-century writer, journalist, radical and lexicographer Niccolò Tommaseo. As a Jew in 1939, however, work opportunities were now limited and he became a schoolteacher in the Jewish School of Ferrara in via Vignatagliata.
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Laura Betti was an Italian actress. Born Laura Trombetti in Bologna, this blonde and flamboyant actress started her career as jazz singer. Betti... made her film debut in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita. In 1963, she became a close friend of the poet and movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini, for whom she made a documentary after his death. Under Pasolini's direction she proved a wonderful talent, in many films like La ricotta and Teorema . In 1976, she portrayed a cruel and eroto-maniacal fascist in Novecento , directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Since the 1960s, she dedicated much of her times to literature and politics. She became the muse for a number of leading political and literary figures in Italy and came to personify the revolutionary and Marxist era of 1970s Italy.
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Lucia Mannucci was an Italian singer, best known as one of the singers of Quartetto Cetra, an Italian vocal quartet. Born in Bologna,... Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Mannucci relocated to Milan at a young age. She attend the Art of Movement school directed by Carla Strauss. She successfully auditioned for EIAR, the Italian national radio broadcasting company, and worked as a singer for the various radio orchestras. She toured Italy for some years, working with the such entertainers as Gorni Kramer, Natalino Otto, and the Quartetto Cetra. On 19 August 1944, she married Virgilio Savona, one of the singers of the Quartetto Cetra. Three years later, she also joined the quartet, replacing Enrico De Angelis. Mannucci was the only female member of Quartetto Cetra, but she also had a successful career as a solo singer. Besides working with Quartetto Cetra, Mannucci pursued a solo career as singer, musical actress, and TV show hostess. She and her husband also did research on folk music. Mannucci died in March 2012 in Milan, aged 91.
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Giovanni Paolo Colonna was an Italian musician and composer. Colonna was born in Bologna, then part of the Papal States. He was a pupil of... Filippuzzi in his native city, and of Abbatini and Benevoli in Rome, where for a time he held the post of organist at S. Apollinare. A dated poem in praise of his music shows that he began to distinguish himself as a composer in 1659. In that year he was chosen organist at S. Petronio in Bologna, where on 1 November 1674 he was made chapel-master. He also became president of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna. Most of Colonna's works are for the church, including settings of the psalms for three, four, five and eight voices, and several masses and motets. He also composed an opera, under the title Amilcare, and an oratorio, La Profezia d Eliseo. The emperor Leopold I received a copy of every composition of Colonna, so that the imperial library in Vienna possesses upwards of 83 church compositions by him.
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Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher,... linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure. He demonstrated a unique and extraordinary cultural versatility, becoming a highly controversial figure in the process. Pasolini was born in Bologna, traditionally one of the most leftist of Italian cities. He was the son of a lieutenant of the Italian Army, Carlo Alberto, who had become famous for saving Benito Mussolini's life during Anteo Zamboni's assassination attempt, and subsequently married an elementary school teacher, Susanna Colussi, in 1921. Pasolini was born in 1922 and was named after his paternal uncle. His family moved to Conegliano in 1923 and, two years later, to Belluno, where another son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini's father was arrested for gambling debts, and his mother took the children to her family's house in Casarsa della Delizia, in the Friuli region. Pasolini began writing poems at the age of seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa.
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Giovanni Battista Martini , also known as Padre Martini, was an Italian musician. Martini was born at Bologna. His father, Antonio Maria Martini, a... violinist, taught him the elements of music and the violin; later he learned singing and harpsichord playing from Padre Pradieri, and counterpoint from Antonio Riccieri and Giacomo Antonio Perti. Having received his education in classics from the fathers of the oratory of San Filippo Neri, he afterwards entered upon a noviciate at the Franciscan monastery at Lago, at the close of which he was received as a Minorite on September 11, 1722. In 1725, though only nineteen years old, he received the appointment of chapel-master in the Franciscan church at Bologna, where his compositions attracted attention. At the invitation of amateurs and professional friends he opened a school of composition at which several celebrated musicians were trained; as a teacher he consistently declared his preference for the traditions of the old Roman school of composition. Padre Martini was a zealous collector of musical literature, and possessed an extensive musical library.
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Giorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual. Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous... Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico , brother Paolo, and sister Jenny. In 1934 he completed his studies at his secondary school, the liceo classico L. Ariosto in Ferrara. Music had been his first great passion and he considered a career as a pianist; however literature soon became the focus of his artistic interests. In 1935 he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bologna. Commuting to lectures by train from Ferrara, he studied under the art historian Roberto Longhi. His ideal of the “free intellectual” was the Liberal historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce. Despite the anti-Semitic race laws which were introduced from 1938, he was able to graduate in 1939, writing a thesis on the nineteenth-century writer, journalist, radical and lexicographer Niccolò Tommaseo. As a Jew in 1939, however, work opportunities were now limited and he became a schoolteacher in the Jewish School of Ferrara in via Vignatagliata.
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Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral "Roman trilogy": Fountains of Rome ;... Pines of Rome ; and Roman Festivals and his operas especially La fiamma. His musicological interest in 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century music led him to also compose pieces based on the music of this period. Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna, Italy. He was taught piano and violin by his father, who was a local piano teacher. He went on to study violin and viola with Federico Sarti at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, composition with Giuseppe Martucci, and historical studies with Luigi Torchi, a scholar of early music. A year after receiving his diploma in violin in 1899, Respighi went to Russia to be principal violist in the orchestra of the Russian Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg during its season of Italian opera. While there he studied composition for five months with Rimsky-Korsakov. He then returned to Bologna, where he earned a second diploma in composition.
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Giacomo Antonio Perti was an Italian composer of the Baroque era. He was mainly active at Bologna, where he was Maestro di Cappella for sixty years.... He was the teacher of Giuseppe Torelli and Giovanni Battista Martini. He was born in Bologna, then part of the Papal States, and began studying music early, learning harpsichord and violin there; later he studied counterpoint. By the age of 17 he had already written a mass, a motet, and a setting of the Magnificat; and in 1678 he wrote his first opera and oratorio. During a stay in Parma, where he studied with Giuseppe Corso detto Celano, he formed his sacred music style; most of his psalm settings of the 1680s and 1690s show the influence of Corso. Later he went to Venice, most likely for a production of one of his operas. In 1690 he was appointed the post of Maestro di Cappella at S Pietro, replacing his uncle Lorenzo Perti. In 1696 he became Maestro di Cappella in another Bolognese church, S.Petronio, after the death of Giovanni Paolo Colonna the year before. He remained in charge for exactly sixty years, until his death at age 95.
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Alfonso Ferrabosco was an Italian composer. While mostly famous as the solitary Italian madrigalist working in England, and the one mainly... responsible for the growth of the madrigal there, he also composed much sacred music. He also may have been a spy for Elizabeth I while he was in Italy. His son, Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger was also a composer. He was the eldest son of Domenico Ferrabosco, and a member of an aristocratic Bolognese family which had many musicians among its members. Alfonso was born in Bologna. Little is known about his early life, but he is known to have spent part of it in Rome and part in Lorraine in the service of Charles of Guise. In 1562, probably with his uncle, he came to England for the first time, where he found employment with Elizabeth I. Throughout his life he made periodic trips to Italy, not without controversy, for evidently neither the Pope nor the Inquisition fully approved of his spending time in England, which was in the late 16th century actively at war with Roman Catholic countries.
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