The Due Torri: Asinelli and Garisenda

Two towers, one leaning

Walk east out of Piazza Maggiore along Via Rizzoli for about five minutes and the street ends at a small junction with two brick towers standing in the middle of it. They are what is left of a medieval skyline that once had dozens of these things, built by wealthy families as a mix of fortification and status.

Asinelli is the tall one, 97.2 meters, the highest surviving medieval tower in Bologna. Garisenda is the stumpy one beside it, 48 meters, and it leans 3.2 meters out of true, which is enough to be alarming from directly underneath.

Neither is beautiful. They are raw brick, patched and buttressed, and they lean at each other at angles that look like a rendering error. They are also the single most recognizable thing in the city.

The Garisenda is closed

Garisenda has been shut to the public since October 2023 over structural concerns. Stabilization work has been estimated at up to ten years and around €20 million. The base is fenced and monitored.

You cannot go up it, and nothing you read from before late 2023 changes that.

The Asinelli: what the numbers mean

498 steps, inside a brick shaft nearly a hundred meters tall, on a wooden staircase that narrows as it climbs. There is no lift. Two-way traffic shares the same stairs. The top is an open platform with a low parapet and a view straight down onto the roofs of the historic center, the porticoes running out toward the walls, and the hills to the southwest.

Booking is timed and mandatory when it is running. The tower has never worked on a walk-up basis in recent years.

What we can and cannot tell you about access

Here is the honest position, as of September 2026.

The last figures we could verify from the museum listing were daily 9:30 to 19:30, last entry 18:30, with a full ticket at €5 and a reduced ticket at €3 covering under 12s, over 65s, school and university groups, groups of 20 or more and Card Musei Metropolitani holders. Bologna Welcome Card PLUS holders enter free.

Against that, when we checked the major booking platforms in September 2026 there was no dedicated Asinelli ticket product for sale anywhere, and there were reports circulating that the tower was closed for renovation. We could not confirm those reports from an official source, and we are not going to repeat them as fact.

So: do not build a day around climbing it. Check museidibologna.it shortly before you travel, and have a second plan.

If you cannot go up

The clock tower at Palazzo d’Accursio is the practical alternative and in some ways the better one. It is on Piazza Maggiore itself, it is reliably bookable through Bologna Welcome, and it puts you directly over the square rather than a few streets east of it. Entries run every 20 minutes.

The terrace of San Petronio is not an option. It closed permanently after restoration and has not reopened, whatever older articles say.

For a view of the whole city rather than the center, the Basilica di San Luca sits on a hill southwest of town at the end of the Portico di San Luca: 666 arches running 3,796 meters uphill without a break, part of the porticoed network that was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.

You can walk it, which takes an hour or so and is a real climb in summer, or take the tourist train that runs out there and back with time at the top.

Tips

• Book the moment you know your dates, if it is open at all. Slots are timed and limited.
• Do not carry a bag you cannot manage one-handed. The staircase is tight and you will want a hand free.
• Go up late in the day rather than at midday. Afternoon light on the brick city is much better, and the platform is cooler.
• Photograph the towers from Via Rizzoli looking east, or from the small square at their base looking up. The lean of the Garisenda only reads properly from close in.
• Stay for the streets around them. Via Zamboni runs northeast from here into the university quarter, and the Quadrilatero is back the other way toward the piazza.