What do Italians call Bologna?

Bologna. The Italian name is the same as the English one, said bo-LOHN-ya, with the “gn” like the “ny” in canyon and the stress on the middle syllable. In the local dialect it is Bulåggna, and the people who live there are bolognesi.

What most people are really asking about is the nicknames. Italians call the city la dotta, la grassa e la rossa. La dotta, the learned, is for the university, founded by tradition in 1088. La grassa, the fat, is for the food. La rossa, the red, began with the color of its brick and terracotta and later came to mean its left-wing politics. There is more on that in why Bologna is called the red city.

A fourth, la turrita, the towered, refers to the medieval towers that once crowded the skyline. About two dozen still stand.

Go further back and the city was the Etruscan settlement of Felsina, then Roman Bononia, the name that eventually became Bologna.