Day trips
Day trips from Bologna
24 towns within 90 minutes
Closest first. Sasso Marconi is 26 minutes out. Drive times are computed on real roads, so they are a fair estimate rather than a promise about traffic.
Sasso Marconi
Province: Bologna · 128 m
26 minutes from Bologna. A 128-meter pre-Apennine town at the confluence of the Setta and Reno, renamed in 1938 for the radio pioneer whose family estate stands in its Pontecchio frazione.
Dozza
Province: Bologna · 190 m
37 minutes from Bologna. A 190-meter painted borgo above the Sellustra valley, where contemporary artists have repainted the house walls every two years since 1960.
Spilamberto
Province: Modena · 69 m
37 minutes from Bologna. A 69-meter Po-plain town on the Via Romea, headquarters of the Consorteria that has certified a DOP product since 1967.
Castel San Pietro Terme
Province: Bologna · 75 m
39 minutes from Bologna. A 75-meter thermal town east of Bologna, its sulphurous waters in use since 1137.
Vignola
Province: Modena · 125 m
39 minutes from Bologna. The cherry-and-castle town on the Panaro at 125 meters, where a fortress and a self-supporting 1500s spiral staircase mark the skyline.
Imola
Province: Bologna · 47 m
40 minutes from Bologna. Bologna's Romagna twin, a medieval brick centro anchored by the Caterina Sforza-fortified Rocca, with the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari (the Imola F1 circuit) wrapping the Santerno river at the southern edge of town.
Castelvetro di Modena
Province: Modena · 152 m
45 minutes from Bologna. A 152-meter hill borgo south of Modena whose checkerboard piazza sits above the slopes that grow Lambrusco Grasparossa.
Bagnara di Romagna
Province: Ravenna · 22 m
47 minutes from Bologna. A 22-meter plain commune in the Bassa Romagna, the only fully preserved medieval castrum surviving in the Romagna lowlands.
Ferrara
Province: Ferrara · 9 m
48 minutes from Bologna. A Renaissance capital planned on a grid rather than grown by accident, small enough to cross by bicycle in twenty minutes, and ringed by walls that still stand whole.
Faenza
Province: Ravenna · 34 m
49 minutes from Bologna. The city that gave its name to faïence, with a tin-glazed maiolica tradition since the fourteenth century and the world ceramics museum since 1908.
Ravenna
Province: Ravenna · 4 m
62 minutes from Bologna. A 4-meter coastal capital of three successive empires, with eight UNESCO mosaic monuments from the fifth and sixth centuries.
Bertinoro
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 254 m
72 minutes from Bologna. A 254-meter Romagna-hill borgo above the Via Emilia, with a twelve-ring hospitality column from 1300 and the slopes that grow Albana DOCG.
Parma
Province: Parma · 57 m
72 minutes from Bologna. A 57-meter Po-plain capital on the Via Emilia, where Correggio painted the Duomo dome and Parmigiano ages in vaults across the province.
Castrocaro Terme e Terra del Sole
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 68 m
76 minutes from Bologna. A pairing of two towns: a ninth-century fortress on a hill and Cosimo I de' Medici's planned Renaissance garrison town on the plain below, founded 1564.
Cervia
Province: Ravenna · 2 m
76 minutes from Bologna. The Adriatic salt town with 827 hectares of working saline, planned in 1697 around a grid of salt workers' houses.
Cesenatico
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 3 m
80 minutes from Bologna. An Adriatic fishing port whose canal was redrawn on commission from a Borgia patron, with ten historic sailboats moored as a floating museum.
Brisighella
Province: Ravenna · 115 m
81 minutes from Bologna. A Lamone-valley borgo at 115 meters under three selenite hills crowned by a fortress, a clock tower, and a sanctuary.
Montechiarugolo
Province: Parma · 130 m
81 minutes from Bologna. A Parmigiano-country borgo on the Enza river, built around a fourteenth-century castle that has stayed in the Marchi family since 1864.
Gualtieri
Province: Reggio nell'Emilia · 22 m
82 minutes from Bologna. A right-bank Po commune in the Reggiana lowlands, built around a hundred-meter-square arcaded piazza and the Bentivoglio palace that holds the Ligabue collection.
Longiano
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 179 m
82 minutes from Bologna. A 179-meter Malatesta borgo on the hills between Cesena and Rimini, holding a major twentieth-century art collection inside the family castle.
Collecchio
Province: Parma · 112 m
83 minutes from Bologna. A Parma-cintura town on the Via Francigena, known today for a dairy multinational's headquarters and a football club's training ground.
Santarcangelo di Romagna
Province: Rimini · 42 m
83 minutes from Bologna. A Via Emilia hill town on the Marecchia plain, with over 150 tufa caves under the centro and a Malatesta fortress on its summit.
Comacchio
Province: Ferrara
84 minutes from Bologna. A canal town on thirteen islets, with brackish lagoons that hold three hundred bird species.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma · 45 m
88 minutes from Bologna. A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.