Why is Bologna called the red city?

The color of the buildings

Bologna’s historic center is built largely of brick, under terracotta roofs. Look down on it from any height and the whole city reads as one red-brown sweep. That is where la rossa, the red, began: it described the buildings long before it described the voters.

The best place to see it is the clock tower of Palazzo d’Accursio, the town hall on Piazza Maggiore. Since November 2021 a terrace above the clock mechanism has given a 360-degree view over the rooftops. A walking tour that ends with the climb is the easy way to combine the view with the story of the square below it.

Torre dell’Orologio, Palazzo d’Accursio (Checked October 2026):

The museum service’s page gives prices “updated to 27 June 2025”, so book through Bologna Welcome and check the price there.

The politics

On 21 April 1945, the day Bologna was liberated, the Committee of National Liberation named the Communist Giuseppe Dozza provisional mayor. He held the job until 1966. Red was the color of the Italian Communist Party, and every mayor for the next half century came from the left.

The run broke on 27 June 1999, when Giorgio Guazzaloca won the run-off with 50.69% and became the first mayor since the Liberation who did not come from the left. It did not last. Sergio Cofferati won the city back for the centre-left in 2004, and it has stayed there since.

Some of that history sits on the square. Facing the Neptune Fountain, the wall of Palazzo d’Accursio carries the photographs of more than 2,000 partisans killed in the Resistance, a memorial that began on Liberation day itself.

La dotta, la grassa, la rossa

The red city is one of a set. Bologna Welcome, the city’s tourism site, still uses the trio la rossa, la dotta, la grassa: the red, the learned and the fat. The learned is for the university, dated by convention to 1088, and the fat is for the food. Our page on what Italians call Bologna covers the nicknames, and what Bologna is most famous for covers the rest.