The Italian city of Bologna is forever etched into the popular British lexicon for our bastardisation of one of its greatest culinary traditions: ragu alla bolognese. Or as we call our own much-adjusted version of it, spag bol.
Another of Bologna’s famous exports*, which we talk about far less, is radical student politics. The University of Bologna is the oldest in the Western world, founded in 1088. From almost the beginning the students organised themselves into self-governing guilds called universitates – the earliest ‘student union’.
A lot of the city’s history is tied up in the relationship between that university and the Catholic Church, because Bologna was one of the most important cities in the Papal States during the tumultuous period of the reformation and counter-reformation.
Much of the tension can be explored through one building, born out of an argument between the city and the Pope: the Archiginnasio.
*with apologies for the clunky transition…
This blog is part of my Building of the Week series, where I explore a different story each week.
Student politics in the Middle Ages
The university of Bologna is the oldest in the Western World, with a history stretching back a thousand years.
The city quickly had a reputation as a centre for learning, and many of Europe’s best and brightest flocked to the city. But as foreign citizens, they had less protections.
The students organised into ‘universitates’ – essentially, student guilds. Over the years, they amassed and held a great deal of power – the ability to fire their professors, for example. It was essentially run by the students.
This was helped along by another unique facet of the University: it had no central home. Teaching happened in rented halls and private houses scattered across the city, with no single institutional building and no single institutional authority. Unlike other medieval universities tied to a cathedral or a crown, power here was dispersed and difficult to pin down.
Bologna itself, too, was effectively self-governed. That changed in 1506, when Pope Julius II marched an army on the city and formally incorporated it into the Papal States.
The city became the de facto capital of the region and strategically vital to the Church, as shown by its later role as the site of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s coronation by Pope Clement VII.
Now, none of this is to say that Bologna was ‘radical’ in a modern sense. Its radicalism was in its institutions and collective power, rather than the political (or theological) radicalism that would emerge in Northern Europe during the reformation.
But this, too, was important. And at this time, politics across Europe was beginning to get a little bit tumultuous, with power being questioned like never before.
The Reformation was spreading through northern Europe, threatening to loosen the Pope’s grip on the continent.
Bologna’s university drew students from across the continent. Its cosmopolitan, dispersed student power was fertile ground for new and dangerous ideas.
How much easier it would be for the Pope if that university was just in one place, where it could be monitored and controlled, and that vital city of Bologna could be one less worry for the church.
Which brings us to a battle over buildings, that we still see the results of in the city today..
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A tale of two buildings
Step into Bologna’s main square, and you’ll immediately be struck by the hulking, slightly odd San Petronio church. One of the biggest churches in the world*, it dominates the historic centre with a huge, half-finished facade, the bottom half in marble, the top in exposed red brick.
San Petronio started life in the 14th century. But by the late 15th and early 16th century, the city felt it needed a church to befit its growing wealth and status. Plans were drawn up to make it bigger than St Peter’s in Rome.
This, of course, angered the Pope. He might have taken full control of Bologna in 1506 – but it was still an upstart. The centre of papal power was very much in Rome. How dare this Northern outpost try to outdo the centre of the Christian world?
And so a new central home for the University of Bologna was built: the Archiginnasio. The Pope at the time, Pius IV, was keen to be seen investing in institutions, and here was an opportunity to achieve three things at once: block San Petronio’s expansion, burnish his own reputation as a patron of learning, and bring a restless university to heel.
It went up extremely quickly (1562-1563) in the very spot the Church of San Petronio had been due to expand. St Peter’s in Rome would remain without equal.
The University’s powerful student guild also lost the great power that came with being decentralised. They were neutered. A dispersed, self-governed student body became something the authorities could keep an eye on. Even on the University of Bologna’s website, it’s described as a ‘subjugation’ of the freedom and power the university had to that point.
Indeed, the make up of the student body itself began to change. Students were more forcefully made to profess their faith – fewer Germanic students of a protestant faith came. The Catholic grip on power in this vital city, a potential hotbed of radicalism, was strengthened.
But the Archiginnasio wasn’t just a tool of political control. It was also a genuinely extraordinary place of learning, and nowhere is that clearer than in its most famous room.
*San Petronio is the 20th largest church in the world, to be exact – and 4th in Italy.
The Archiginnasio’s treasure – the Anatomical Theatre
And now we get to the main reason I wanted to write about the Archiginnasio, and the reason most tourists visit the building. The creepy, utterly singular, entirely wood panelled Anatomical Theatre.
Bologna had a long history as a centre of medical research. According to its official website, it was at the University where – a few centuries before the Archiginnasio was built – autopsies were fully integrated into teaching activities.
The Anatomical Theatre was built in the 17th century as the architectural centrepiece of this centre of knowledge. It was carved out of spruce – a wood which helped the lecturer’s voice boom around the room – and fused science deeply with art. It’s richly decorated with wooden statues and zodiacal symbols, a reminder that medicine and astrology weren’t yet separate disciplines: the body was understood to be governed by the cosmos.
There are also several dramatic wooden carved statues.Most famous are the ‘Spellati’, or ‘Skinned Men’.
These two flayed figures sat either side of the teacher’s chair, sculpted by Ercole Lelli – anatomically accurate enough to be used as teaching aids by the students. A little higher up is a cherub, holding a thigh bone.
The intricately carved ceiling of the Anatomical Theatre, and the ‘Skinned Men’ wooden figures.
According to tradition, dissections would take place under the gaze of the Catholic church – a member of the Inquisition observing through a small window into the theatre.
This wasn’t to observe the dissection itself. The Catholic church very much sanctioned anatomical dissection. Instead, they were observing the lecturer – ensuring they were sticking to the orthodox account, and not radicalising any of those students.
A grand day out
During much of its history, the Anatomical Theatre was as much a tourist destination as it was a place of learning.
It could seat 250 people, and visiting dignitaries would flock to watch dissections take place. This was especially popular because most dissections were performed on the cadavers of executed criminals.
A public hanging was already one of the city’s great spectacles. The Anatomical Theatre offered a sequel: the chance to watch the same body opened up and explained, all in one day’s entertainment. In the late Middle Ages, this was a great day out.
The theatre remained in use until the early 19th century, when the University moved out of the building – an explicit break from the building’s Papal origins under a Napoleonic reorganisation.
The Theatre was later almost totally destroyed during the Second World War, when Bologna saw intense bombing for the same reason the Pope cared so much about it centuries earlier – it was a strategic hub in Northern Italy.
When the war was over, the Theatre was rigorously reconstructed, giving it the immaculate appearance we see today. The marble slab, where dissections took place, was also replaced with a reconstruction – the originally apparently in storage, because it still has blood stains visible.
Bologna continued its radical history, and continues to be known as ‘La Rossa’ – the Red One, for its terracotta buildings and its brand of politics. It was, for example, one of the most important centres of anti-Fascist resistance in Italy.
A visit to the city today and you can still see its identities in constant conflict with each other – the formal, extravagant beauty and signs of power inside buildings like the Archiginnasio and the church of San Petronio, and the visible radicalism, graffiti and left-wing bars around many of its streets close to the university.
As for the Archiginnasio – it’s now a tourist destination, but also the city’s central library. A building initially used by the Pope to consolidate top-down control over knowledge, now a free public reading room, for the modern Bolognese to expand their own ideas.
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