336 hours in Bologna

Mostly playful and juvenile, without the polish and ambition of Porto, yet still one senses that important urban psychodramas are being played out on the ochre walls of Bologna. A mask falls away from a modern-day Madonna living two lives. Unlock your brain and start thinking for yourself, urges a hollow, floating head on Via Manzoni, his eyes, mouth and skull open, providing a kind of hieroglyphic blueprint for doing so. Stickmen cops shoot at one another because ... well, there's a backstory there surely. The impulsive brushstrokes of the neighborhood tribalist are found here in great numbers of course. As in Amsterdam, Brussels and almost every major Western city, they become almost invisible after a couple of days. More accomplished works can be found on the rolling shutters shopkeepers pull down at night, many on the city's west side. A marimba-playing boar by Andrea D'Ascanio, aka Sardomuto. He's from Sardinia. The next four are by Aless

They built them to be closer to the heavens or further from the muck of the street. To scan for marauders coming over the Appenine Mountains or to one-up the Joneses next door. Craning your neck at the Piazza di Porta Ravegnana, one can appreciate all of these hypotheses. What we do know is that a field of slender four-sided monoliths once reached toward the sky here and that one of them, the Torre Garisenda, was the subject of verses in Dante's "Inferno." Clouds floating in the opposite direction of the tower's tilt created the impression it was about to crash into the ground, the poet remarked. The lines are inscribed at the base of the tower, which was taller in Dante's time. For safety's sake, it was shortened in the 1350s. The Torre Garisenda is a tale of survival. Until recently it was thought that as many as 180 such torri existed in the city, which inspired conjectural drawings like the one below and, in turn, lazy headline writers to des

The weather here has been indescribably beautiful during my visit, but waking up to the sound of rain is a soothing excuse to play hooky from "vacation school," to sit around watching "Suburra" or soccer highlights, or to listen to the patter on the leaves in my neighbor's perfect little giardino , where a toddling granddaughter visits most days around noon and fills the courtyard with laughter.

As a stranger in a strange land, I always feel a bit adrift, not above relying on the unearned sympathy of strangers who feel sorry for the guy who can't hold up his end of the conversation. Welcomed by the staff at any food establishment in Bologna, however, the dynamic shifts in my favor. I am safe and invincible, cocooned by an unassuming professionalism. Waiters here have invariably addressed me in Italian and not baby English, and that means a lot. To a fault they have been impeccably polite and unobtrusive, patiently waiting for me to raise an index finger for dessert, for coffee, for il conto . How refreshing it is not to be assaulted with a "How's everything tasting? or a "Are you still working on that?" At his most gregarious, a Bologna waiter might approach from the side, bend slightly at the waist without making eye contact and ask in a near-whisper, "Va bene?" before quickly retreating. It is a pro move. We are co-conspirators. Nino

The number of monstrously large 16th-century palazzos in Bologna is mind-blowing. You can't walk 50 meters without passing one, and after awhile you almost stop noticing them. A few of the old palaces sit empty, but most have been repurposed into flats, or offices for lawyers or trade unions (an unsurprisingly large number of these). Palazzo Torfanini with its 16th-century portico. The door was ajar, so I walked inside. Some are open to the public for a small fee. The one-percenters back then could do whatever they wanted, apparently, but still, I can't believe the scale of these residences. Huge staffs must have been employed to tend to them, and today you'd need a drone camera to put their mass in perspective. Casa Delle Tuate at No. 6 Via Galliera. Some of the grandest of these Renaissance-era homes line Via Galliera, which was the principal north-south artery before Via dell'Indipendenza was carved out in the late 1800s. You can see several