University of Bologna

The oldest continuously operating university in the western world, founded in 1088

The Università di Bologna is the oldest continuously operating university in Europe and arguably the world, founded in 1088. The medieval city's centre of gravity still sits where the university expanded in the sixteenth century — around Via Zamboni and Piazza Verdi.

The institution shaped not only Bologna but the very idea of a university: the word universitas originally referred to the self-organised guild of foreign students who hired and fired their own professors here. Today the university has about 85,000 students spread across faculties throughout the city, giving Bologna its distinctive young, politically engaged atmosphere.

things to do sight university zone
A story
Dante, Petrarch, Copernicus, and Erasmus all studied here. The original lecture halls were rented rooms scattered across the city — the university had no central building for the first 475 years of its existence, until the Archiginnasio opened in 1563.