Piazza VIII Agosto
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
Listen
Transcript
The name Piazza VIII Agosto commemorates 8 August 1848, when Bolognese insurgents drove Austrian troops from the city during the revolutionary upheavals of that year. The victory was temporary in the larger political struggle, but the date stayed in Bologna’s civic memory.
This is a useful place to end because the university-city relationship never remained purely academic. Bologna became strongly associated in the twentieth century with organised labour, anti-fascism and the political left. Those later identities should not be projected backwards onto the medieval commune, but neither should the city be presented as a harmless museum of pasta and porticoes.
Public space here has repeatedly been used for markets, demonstrations and political assembly. That is the thread running back to Piazza Maggiore: who gets to occupy the city, speak in it, teach in it and govern it?
Bologna can be delicious without being reduced to food. If all you remember is mortadella, the medieval jurists would probably charge you for an appeal.