Palazzo d'Accursio (Palazzo Comunale)

A town hall you can walk into

Palazzo d’Accursio closes the west side of Piazza Maggiore, opposite Palazzo dei Banchi and around the corner from the Fontana del Nettuno. It is still Bologna’s town hall, so parts of it are offices with people doing council work in them. The rest is open.

Go through the main door from the piazza and you are in a courtyard. Off it runs a wide ramped staircase, sloped rather than stepped, wide enough for a crowd. None of that costs anything, and plenty of visitors do only that much and leave satisfied.

This has been the seat of city government for centuries and it still is, which gives the building a different feel from the museums around it. Council staff walk past you on the stairs. Notices about municipal business are pinned up in the corridors. It is a working civic building that lets visitors in rather than an attraction with an office wing attached.

The paid part is upstairs, and one ticket covers two things.

Torre dell’Orologio, the clock tower

The clock tower is the oldest part of the palace, a thirteenth-century tower. It reopened in February 2021 after restoration, and since 1 November 2021 visitors can go out onto a terrace above the clock mechanism with a 360-degree view.

The visit starts from the Sala Farnese on the second floor, which is worth arriving early enough to look at properly rather than passing through on the way to the stairs. From there you go up inside the tower, past the clock, and out onto the top, with Piazza Maggiore laid out below you and the roof of San Petronio filling the far side.

Entries go three times an hour, at :00, :20 and :40, and each one is timed. That keeps the top from getting crowded, and it also means slots run out, particularly on Saturdays. Book online through Bologna Welcome before you arrive in the city rather than on the morning.

The ticket is €10 full and €7 reduced (Checked October 2026). Reduced covers Card Cultura holders, children aged 4 to 12, over 65s, school groups, university students and guided groups of six or more. Children up to 3 and Bologna Welcome Card holders enter free.

This is the view we would send most people to. The Asinelli Tower is far higher, but it has been closed since October 2023 with no reopening date, and the clock tower puts you directly over the square rather than a few streets away from it.

Torre dell’Orologio opening hours

The tower runs Tuesday to Sunday on two seasonal timetables (Checked October 2026):

The hours above come from the Musei di Bologna page, whose calendar is labelled 2025 and whose prices were last updated in June 2025. Confirm the current times there before you plan a day around them.

The Collezioni Comunali d’Arte

The municipal art collections occupy a run of rooms inside the palace and are included with the tower ticket, so there is no reason to skip them. The ticket stays valid for the collections for six months after you buy it. They are hung in the historic rooms themselves, which means the ceilings and the decoration are half the reason to go through.

Opening hours differ from the tower, and this catches people out. The collections run Tuesday and Thursday 14:00 to 19:00, Wednesday and Friday 10:00 to 19:00, and Saturday, Sunday and holidays 10:00 to 18:30 (Checked October 2026). They close on Mondays that are not public holidays, and on 1 May.

On a Tuesday or Thursday morning the tower is open and the art collections are not, which catches out anyone who arrives at ten expecting to do both together. Afternoons are the safe bet on those days.

Tips

• Book the tower slot for late afternoon in summer, when it stays open until 20:20. The light on the square is better and the top is cooler than at midday.
• Do the art collections first, then the tower. The collections have no time slot, so they absorb any wait before your entry time.
• Mondays are the trap. Both parts close, and so do several other museums in the center. Save Monday for the square itself and the Quadrilatero.
• The ramped staircase is worth walking up even if you are not paying for anything. It is one of the more surprising interiors on the piazza and it is free.
• If the tower is sold out, Salaborsa is directly across Piazza del Nettuno, free, and its excavations stay open until 19:00 from Tuesday to Saturday.