The city of Bologna is a well-kept secret - a fascinating and beautiful town where you get a strong feel for the 'real' Italy. Home to the oldest university in Europe where Umberto Eco lectures, one of Bologna's nicknames is 'La dotta' (the learned). It also has the nickname 'La rossa' on account of its red roofs and reddish porticoed architecture and also because it is a traditional stronghold for left wing politics (La Brigada Rossa). The Bolognesi are passionate about food and the town is famed for excellent cuisine - for which it's known as 'La grassa', or the fat lady. Don't leave without sampling the local wine and delicious regional dishes such as meat-filled tortellini, mortadella, (a tasty sausage) and crescentine, (a filled flat-bread pocket).

Expect to pay a premium for room prices on Fiera (Trade Fair) days; cheaper rates are often available at weekends.

GRAND HOTEL BAGLIONI
Via dell' Indipendenza 8 (00 39 051 225 445, fax: 234 840). This is the luxury option, in a historic palazzo with ceilings frescoed by the Carracci brothers. ££

THE CORONA D'ORO
Via Oberdan 12 (00 39 051 236 456, fax: 262 679). The Corona d'Oro occupies part of a 14th-century house, one of the few that still has its original wooden-stilted façade. Breakfast is served in a magnificent Art Nouveau salon with retractable glass roof. ££

HOTEL OROLOGIO
Via IV Novembre 10 (00 39 051 231 253, fax: 260 552). A delightful three-star hotel on a small square that gives on to Piazza Maggiore. Recently refurbished, it has comfortable rooms, friendly staff and a computer terminal in the lounge for the use of guests. ££

HOTEL DEI COMMERCIANTI
Via de' Pignattari 11 (00 39 051 233 052, fax: 224 733). The hotel is housed in a 12th-century palazzo that was once the seat of the town hall. Warm, earthy tones predominate; restoration work has exposed parts of the original medieval structure. ££

Bologna is known as the gastronomic capital of northern Italy. The local osterie and trattorie are often the best places to sample the traditional dishes (tortellini, tagliatelle with ragu, mortadella and tigelle) and good local wines at low prices.

PAPPAGALLO
Piazza della Mercanzia 3 (00 39 051 232 807). Right in the centre of the town under the shade of the two leaning towers, Pappagallo is a Bolognese institution famous throughout Italy. The elegant and refined restaurant is housed in a medieval building and has been serving up authentic Bolognese dishes for a century - try the guinea-fowl breast with grapes or Pappagallo's yellow lasagne. Open for lunch and dinner.

NICOLA'S PIZZERIA
Piazza San Martino 9. This serves the best pizza in Bologna. Set in a beautiful, quiet square, it is best to visit when the weather is good and white-clothed tables line the pavement. The pizzas are crisp and the toppings delicious and there are good fish dishes as well.

TRATTORIA FANTONI
Via del Pratello 11a (00 39 051 236 358). This traditional trattoria, in a quiet street not far from the city centre, is excellent value and a relaxing place to taste simple Bolognese cuisine. The menu is printed daily - testament to the freshness of the ingredients and cooking. There are several pasta dishes, meat and fish second courses and varied seasonal grilled vegetables. There are several good local wines on the menu and all the classics for desserts (including panna cotta and tiramisu).

TRATTORIA MELONCELLO
Via Saragozza 240a (00 39 051 614 3947). This traditional trattoria is near the covered walkway up to the church of San Luca. The Polpette (meatballs) in tomato sauce are considered the tastiest in Bologna. Other dishes include tagliatelle, tortellini and ossobuco and roast veal. The wines are excellent.

OSTERIA BELFAGOR
Via Saragozza 145 (00 39 051 614 3648). This intimate candle-lit osteria has a modern feel while still serving delicious homemade pasta dishes that you would expect to find in a more traditional trattoria. The Belfagor's logo is a devil, and the long list of excellent wines and bottled beers are sure to tempt you. Open Fri and Sat from 6pm until 2.30am or 3.30am, closed Sundays.

TRATTORIA BATTIBECCO
Via Battibecco 4, (00 39 051 223 298, fax: 051 263 579 www.battibecco.com).This Michelin-starred restaurant serves delicious Italian dishes such as tagliolini with aubergine and scampi, or goose breast with honey and walnut salad. Proprietor and chef Nico Costa makes sure the standard is consistently high and an excellent wine list accompanies the menu.

BITONE
Via Emilia Levante 111. Bitone is outside the city but worth the journey for its fresh, seasonal ingredients, not to mention its Michelin star. It's a favourite with locals and boasts a wine list with over 400 names.

LA PERNICE E LA GALLINA
Via dell'Abbadia 4 (00 39 051 269 922). The 'Partridge and Hen' has become a must for local gourmets, attracted by young chef Marco Fadiga's creative take on Bolognese cuisine. Has one Michelin star. Closed Sunday and Monday lunch.

DIANA
Via Indipendenza 24 (00 39 051 228 162). Close to piazza Maggiore and the city centre, Diana is a renowned restaurant that does justice to the local cuisine - the usual favourites are tortellini in brood and tagliolini with butter, truffles and porcini mushrooms.

TORRE DE' GALLUZZI
Corte Galluzzi 5a (00 39 051 267 638). Situated in a medieval tower, this elegant restaurant presents refined Emilian dishes at an upscale price. Closed Sunday.

GODOT
Via Cartoleria 12 (00 39 051 226 315). A young, funky wine bar southeast of the centre, the cuisine is light and healthy, based on fresh seasonal ingredients. Closed Sunday.

With a large student population, Bologna has a lively nightlife, which gets going late into the evening and there are clubs to suit everyone - including excellent live jazz clubs, lively gay clubs and sedate bars for a quiet drink. The best time to sample the city's nightlife is in summer when open-air clubs spring up all over the city's parks and in the surrounding hills.

OPEN AIR CLUBS

CORTE DEGLI ARANCI
Via Dozza Giuseppe 26 (0039 051 451 541). This is one of Bologna's most popular and lively outdoor clubs, set in a beautiful old villa, with the dance floor in the open-air courtyard. It gets packed with well-heeled young Bolognesi. Easiest to get to by car.

MADE IN BO
As soon as the weather becomes stifling (usually in the spring) this huge nightclub extravaganza sprawls itself over the city's Parco Nord - a short bus ride north of the city centre. It has the feel of a music festival with stalls selling ethnic trinkets and clothes, several bar areas and dance floors.

JAZZ

CANTINA BENTIVOGLIO
Via Mascarella 4b, (00 39 051 265 416, fax 225 811, www.cantinabentivoglio.it). The most famous of Bologna's wine bars, this cavernous cellar is the venue for excellent wine, fresh homemade pasta dishes and the best that Bologna has to offer in live Jazz. The rich and famous gather here as well as Bologna's huge student population.

INDOOR DANCE CLUBS

KINKY
Via Zamboni1 (00 39 335 548 0418). At the foot of the two towers Garisenda and Asinelli, Kinky has a queue around the block every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. One of the most popular and accessible of Bologna's nightclubs, it pulls in a trendy student and gay crowd looking for a night of serious dance music.

JAM CLUB
Via Mascarella 2a (00 39 051 221 003). This dark venue is a regular haunt for Bologna's student and foreign student population. The music is as popular as you can get - think Britney Spears and Back Street Boys. But the relatively cheap admission means the dance floor is always packed until the early hours. Free salsa lessons are given in a smaller room on certain nights.

BARS AND CAFES

LE STANZE DEL TENENTE
Via del Borgo S. Pietro 1 (00 39 051 228 767). This beautiful bar and restaurant should be at the top of your places to visit. Set in an ancient building, the frescoes on the walls are 400 years old, although not even that can stop the style-conscious Italian clientele from smoking inside. Well lit with atmospheric candles, there is still a sense of peace here even though the most spiritual thing in the room is probably the rows of Italian liqueur bottles behind the bar.

OLINDO FACCIOLI
Via Altabella 15b. A short hop from Piazza Maggiore, this old-fashioned Bolognese drinking den has a well-stocked cellar.

CAFFE COMMERCIANTI
Strada Maggiore 23. A favourite coffee or Campari pit-stop for University profs.

MAJANI
Via de' Carbonesi 5. Classic chocs from a Bolognese home industry: try the cannellini, cigar-shaped wafers filled with gianduia.

TORRE DEGLI ASINELLI
For an overview of the city, climb the worn wooden staircase on the inside of the Torre degli Asinelli, the taller of Bologna's two leaning towers. Seen from below, this looks a bit like one of those never-ending staircases Escher liked to draw - must be something to do with the amusing tilt of the tower - and when you're around halfway up the 498 steps, it can feel like one, too. From the top, though, after the wave of vertigo has subsided, the grand plan comes into focus, especially to the east, where four long, thin roads slice through the terracotta roofs with mathematical precision.

PIAZZA MAGGIORE
The Piazza Maggiore is the centre of the Bolognese universe, the heart of the mandala, the belly-button of the cosmos (Bolognesi like to claim that tortellini are modelled on Venus' navel). It changes according to the time of day. In the morning, it's a square of crossing paths as people hurry to work, to the lecture theatre, to the bar, to lunch. By the afternoon, it has begun to hold its public: huddles of old men; children chasing pigeons.

SAN PETRONIO
The façade of the church itself - Bologna's de facto cathedral - is a tempting symbol for a city that not long ago was lambasted by its own archbishop for loose morals and godlessness. Somehow, it was never finished: a beautiful rose-and-cream Gothic lower storey, with intricate bas-relief panels by Jacopo della Quercia around the main door, gives way to a dark, vaguely menacing brick upper section.

SANTO STEFANO
Set at one end of a pretty cobbled square, Santo Stefano is not one church but several, fused over the centuries into a sort of one-stop spiritual shop. Veined alabaster windows fill the Byzantine church of Santi Vitale e Agricola with a glowing orange light; next door, the 12-sided Chiesa del San Sepolcro, with its Roman columns and central tomb of Bolognese patron saint Petronius, feels more pagan temple than Christian shrine. Under the arcades that run along the south side of the square, young Bolognesi can be seen rollerblading in the evenings.

COLLEGIO DI SPAGNA
Students used to come from all over Europe to study in Bologna, attending lectures in the various faculties and lodging in national colleges. (The Collegio di Spagna, founded in 1365, still exists; today, it acts as a post-graduate finishing school for the Spanish professional and political elite.) By the 16th century, though, Bologna was a part of the Papal States, and the Holy See was nervous about keeping control over such a headless, diffuse campus. Which is why the Archiginnasio was built, close up against San Petronio, to unify the scattered departments. Inside, every inch of wall and ceiling space is occupied by the coats of arms of former rectors, professors and students. Upstairs, the Teatro Anatomico is a baroque concerto in wood all except for the marble slab in the centre where bodies were dissected. They were the first school to carry out this practice. The canopy over the professor's chair is held up by two scannati, or flayed human figures; opposite was a grate through which the Pope's legate could observe the lesson, making sure that no heresies were pronounced and that the two parts of the body that the Church considered out of bounds to science - the brain and the heart - were not touched by the knife.

MUSEUMS

Museo Morandi is located on the top floor of 14th-century Palazzo d'Accursio, the huge bastion of a townhall overlooking Piazza Maggiore. Morandi (1890 - 1964) painted bottles, jars, jugs and the occasional tin. On the rare occasions when he felt the need for a different subject, Morandi painted what he could see from the window of his studio: rooftops; the tangle of trees in the courtyard.

Other museums include the Pinacoteca Nazionale, a heavyweight collection of paintings from the Bolognese and Emilian schools, the wonderful Museo di Anatomia Patologica, which displays wax models of human organs affected by various diseases, and the Museo Ducati, a sharply-designed tribute to the city's legendary red motorbikes.

SAN LUCA
The sanctuary of the blessed Virgin of San Luca sits on top of a hill to the south west of the city and can be seen for miles around. There is a procession once a year when the older elements of Bolognese society make the pilgrimage up to the sanctuary to worship the Virgin. But many visitors to the city also make the long uphill journey simply for the amazing views of the city below. The 4km path up to the church is covered all the way to the top with Bologna's famous porticoes, so there is no excuse not to make the trip in bad weather too.

DESIGNER FASHION
Most of the Italian designer names - (Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and Furla to name a few) are on Via Farini behind piazza Maggiore.

HIGH STREET FASHION
Via Indipendenza, off piazza Maggiore, is lined with stylish clothes boutiques and irresistible shoe shops. Carry on the search for the perfect outfit on via Ugo Bassi and via Rizzoli.

FOOD
Bologna is so well known for its food that it's only right you should take some home with you. Tamburini on via Caprarie 1 is a small delicatessen selling the region's specialities such as freshly made tortellini, local cheeses including parmiggiano-reggiano, a selection of hams and balsamic vinegar from nearby Modena.

MARKETS
The local food markets are fascinating places. Visit the daily street market just off piazza Maggiore in via Clavature, via Pecherie and vicolo Ranocchi. There is also an excellent indoor food hall on via Ugo Bassi which sells fresh local produce.

AIRPORT
G Marconi airport is 5km from Bologna city centre. A taxi into the centre isn't expensive.

AIRLINES FROM THE UK
British Airways (0845 779 9977; www.british-airways.com) flies from Heathrow and Alitalia (0870 544 8259; www.alitalia.com) from Gatwick.

Bologna, like much of Italy, is best avoided in July and August, when it is extremely hot and prices are inflated for tourists. With its kilometres of protective archways, it is an easy city to visit even during the November and December downpours.

Piazza Maggiore 6 (00 39 051 239 660, fax: 231 454). Open Mon to Sat, 8.30am to 7pm; Sun 9am to 1pm. Other branches at the airport and train station. Piazza Maggiore 6 (00 39 051 239 660, fax: 231454). Open Mon to Sat, 8.30am to 7pm; Sun 9am to 1pm. Other branches at the airport and train station.