I had told my friend Simone I would arrive at 9pm. It is almost 10pm, and I am still walking down Via San Vitale, downing 2 euro spritzes from Cafe Paris, in Bologna for my UTS International Studies honours exchange. Turning the corner I walk into Number 2 Vicolo Bolognetti, a typical Bolognese palazzo with an imposing, arched entrance leading to a square courtyard framed on four sides by a peristyle colonnade. The walls are painted Bologna terracotta orange, and they house Làbas, a circolo, or centro sociale (social centre) that hosts weekly events organised by the students of Bologna. The bar is cash only. A beer is one euro and the reusable plastic cups are printed with ‘follow your local antifa’. That night, Làbas was hosting BoloRoom, Bologna’s ballroom circle. I remember a guy stripping slowly until he was just wearing a g-string in the sex siren category, and performers voguing to a Britney Spears song (though neither I nor the people I went with can remember which). I can’t think of anything in Sydney that is like Làbas – a mix between a bar, a political meeting place, a performance space. Sometimes a market, sometimes a school (Làbas hosts free Italian classes for women refugees). I was kicking myself for being late because (other than the fact I felt bad for missing my friend Simone’s performance), I had been hoping to meet people to interview for my thesis, which I am planning on writing about gay identity in Italy. One of the reasons I had chosen to do a year long honours exchange rather than the one semester was so I could write my thesis in Italy, on some issue of contemporary importance to Italians.
After BoloRoom, we went to Il Cassero, the main queer club in Bologna. Cassero was originally housed in the Porta Saragozza, one of the medieval gates through the city walls, when it was occupied in 1982 by the Circolo di Cultura Omosessuale. The same gate marks the beginning of the Portico of San Luca, which proceeds up a hill to a pilgrimage church that houses the icon of the Virgin and Child of San Luca. Il Cassero is now housed in an 18th Century former salt storehouse, with a sign out the front saying Sempre Frocie, Mai Fasciste (always fags, never fascists). I wonder how the 18th Century salt merchants would digest that. Sexuality and religion both derive meaning from the spaces in which they are expressed. The Porta Saragozza is inscribed with both the story of gay political activism and Bolognese Catholicism. As a Catholic site, its occupation in 1982 by the Circolo was a rebellious act. As a gay site, the way the Porta’s history is remembered and memorialised in the present determines its relationship to Bolognese homosexuality.
The next day, I had History of Roman Art in Aula 4 at 32 Via Zamboni–one of the subjects I get to take here that aren’t offered at UTS. Via Zamboni is the main street that houses the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the world. Along the street are baroque palazzi, built in a more economically stable period of Italian history, spray painted with ‘Palestina Libera’ and ‘no future’. In Bologna, things that feel so contemporary, and that are such expressions of youth culture, are found alongside spaces of such history. In front of the Bologna Opera House on Zamboni is Piazza Giuseppe Verdi, which is filled seemingly 24/7 with the plastic tables and chairs of Bar Freud. During aperitivo hour and into the night (almost every night of the week) the tables are filled with students having beers and 15 euro Aperol spritz jugs with potato chips after class. Further up Zamboni is the Irish pub, which is filled with exchange students on Tuesday for Tandem Nights, organised by the Bologna exchange students network.
Bologna is a city for students. Student life is built into the urban landscape and culture of the city itself. However, you’ll never find students climbing the medieval Asinelli tower or diagonally crossing the central Piazza Maggiore, because according to popular folklore doing so will curse you to never graduate. In the historic centre and into the mid-century western quarter almost every footpath is covered by a portico. The Bolognese portici started to appear in the 13th Century and were built to house the great increase of students in the city studying at UniBo. Almost every portico in Bologna is covered with writing, especially in the University Quarter, where students write messages and poems and sayings in pen on the walls. One I recall, near Làbas, read ‘QUI HO LASCIATO LA MIA ANIMA, E QUI LA RITROVO SEMPRE’. Here I left my soul, and here I always come back to find it. Another read ‘BOLO TI AMO / POI TI ODIO / POI TI AMO / SCAPPO / POI RITORNO’. Bolo[gna] I love you / then I hate you / then I love you / I run away / then I return. The portici of Via del Pratello, the centre of Bolognese anti-fascism in the south-west of the city were filled with students for the festa della Liberazione on the 25th of April, celebrating the end of the Nazi occupation of Italy and remembering the partisans (guerilla fighters who fought against the occupiers). On a red banner with a hammer and sickle draped from a window on Pratello was written ‘PRIMA BANDITI, POI PARTIGIANI, OGGI RESISTENTI!’. First bandits, then partisans, today resistors! Being a student in Bolo means being politically engaged. Not in the eye-roll SAlt sense, rather, the things these students are fighting against feel so real when we think about the fact that Meloni is Italy’s most right wing Prime Minister since Mussolini. Pratello, on 25 Aprile is filled with such energy rejecting absolutely the Fascist past of Italy you forget that Mussolini’s tomb, and the town he grew up in, is only an hour’s drive away.
Bolo feels like a city with that peculiar European quality of being both dirty and beautiful. The city is covered in graffiti, full of questionable smells and overgrown patches of grass, while at the same time filled with grand boulevards and medieval cathedrals. In this sense it embodies the student experience, that of being part of an intellectual tradition while at the same time railing absolutely against the conservative. The Italian word studentesco embodies this, as an adjective meaning student-esque, or student vibe kind of thing. Though, maybe it would feel a bit more contemporary if they played Hips Don’t Lie at the club a bit less.
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