The Due Torri: Asinelli and Garisenda

Two towers, one leaning

Walk east out of Piazza Maggiore along Via Rizzoli for about six 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.

Is the Asinelli Tower open? The position in October 2026

No. We checked the official sources again on 14 October 2026.

The Musei di Bologna page still says the Asinelli has been closed since 23 October 2023, so that monitoring work can run on the Garisenda beside it. It gives no opening hours and no reopening date. Bologna Welcome’s booking page for the climb carries a closure notice and takes no reservations.

There is no official date for reopening. Local press reports that the city’s own tourism plan does not count on one yet, and that the councillor responsible has floated 2028 as a first plausible scenario, once the Garisenda has been made safe. That is a hope, not a timetable.

So do not build a day around climbing it. Check the official page shortly before you travel in case anything has changed, and have a second plan.

Asinelli Tower tickets

There are none to buy. Before the closure, booking was mandatory and timed, and the climb was booked through Bologna Welcome. The museum page still shows the old prices, €5 full and €3 reduced, but treat those as history rather than a current tariff.

If a reseller is still offering “Asinelli tickets”, check what it is actually selling. GetYourGuide lists no Asinelli climb at all; the tours below walk past the towers rather than up them.

The Garisenda is closed

Garisenda has been shut to the public since October 2023 over structural concerns, and the museum page describes it as under restoration. 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.

Torre Prendiparte, the other tall tower

If the Due Torri leave you wanting a tower you can get inside, the one people mention next is the Torre Prendiparte, also called the Torre Coronata. It stands on Piazzetta Prendiparte, a short walk from the Due Torri, and at 60 meters it is the second tallest tower in Bologna after the Asinelli.

The Prendiparte family, Guelphs, built it in the twelfth century as a defensive tower. In 1751 Cardinal Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV, turned it into the archbishop’s prison, and graffiti left by prisoners survives in the former cells on the third to fifth floors. Twelve floors of stairs lead up to a terrace at the top.

It is privately owned, and the owners now sell it as an exclusive overnight stay with breakfast and sole use of the tower and terrace. They publish no day-visit timetable or price. Bologna Welcome’s listing mentions Sunday openings, but the page is undated, so contact the tower directly through prendiparte.it before you plan around a visit.

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 bookable through Bologna Welcome, and since 2021 it has a terrace above the clock with a 360-degree view over the square. Entries go three times an hour.

The terrace of San Petronio is not an option. The basilica’s own site says it closed permanently after restoration, whatever older articles say.

For a view of the whole city rather than the center, the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca sits on a hill southwest of town at the end of the Portico di San Luca: 666 arches by the usual count, about 3.8 km, part of the porticoed network that was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.

It is 4.7 km on foot from Piazza Maggiore, and the last stretch is a real climb in summer. The San Luca Express tourist train runs out there from Piazza Galvani if you would rather ride. Our San Luca page has the route and the hours.

Tips

• 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.
• Come early or late. The junction is a traffic and pedestrian crossroads, and it is calmest before the shops open.
• Check the official page the week you travel. If the Asinelli does reopen, booking was mandatory and timed before the closure, and slots are likely to go fast.
• 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. Santo Stefano is a few minutes south.