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.

The clock tower

The Torre dell’Orologio 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 to the level of the clock face and out onto the top, with Piazza Maggiore laid out below you and the roof of San Petronio filling the far side.

Entries run every 20 minutes and are 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.

As of September 2026 the ticket is €10 full and €7 reduced. Reduced covers Card Cultura holders, children aged 4 to 12, over 65s and groups of six or more. Children under 4 and Bologna Welcome Card holders enter free. Check the official page before booking, since museum tariffs get revised.

This is the view we would send most people to. The Asinelli Tower is far higher, but its access has been unreliable, and the clock tower puts you directly over the square rather than a few streets away from it.

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. 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. As of September 2026 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. They close on Mondays that are not public holidays.

Hours worth checking twice

The tower’s hours shift with the season, roughly 10:00 to 18:20 through the winter and stretching to about 10:00 to 20:20 at the height of summer. They also move when the clocks change. On 24 and 31 December the hours are shorter, and the tower closes entirely on 25 December.

Everything above was accurate in September 2026. Confirm the current times on the official listing before you plan a day around them.

The practical upshot is that the tower and the collections do not overlap perfectly. 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 on one ticket. Afternoons are the safe bet on those days.

Tips

• Book the tower slot for late afternoon in summer. The light on the square is better and the top is cooler than it is 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 open the same afternoon.