Bologna: what you can enter while the tower is shut

Two of Bologna's viewpoints are out at once in 2026: the Asinelli tower is closed for maintenance, and the terrace of San Petronio is closed permanently after its restoration, so plan the day at street level.

The Asinelli tower is not bookable

The official Bologna Welcome channel carries a closure notice for the Asinelli tower in September 2026 and offers the Torre dell'Orologio as the panoramic alternative. Nothing can be reserved for the climb while that notice stands.

When it is open the climb costs €5.00 full and €3.00 reduced, is booked into timed slots cancellable up to 24 hours ahead, and involves 498¹ steps with no elevator. The closure traces back to the safety works on the Garisenda tower, running since 2023.

Sources contradict each other here, and it is worth knowing which one wins: torridibologna.it still publishes hours and prices as though the tower were open, while the booking system shows it shut. The booking channel is the one that decides whether you get in.

San Petronio: free, unfinished, and permanently without its terrace

Entry to the Basilica of San Petronio on Piazza Maggiore costs nothing, and the building has been unfinished since work started in 1388². The bare brick of the upper facade is not decay, it is a project that stopped.

Inside are 22 side chapels and the meridian line traced across the floor by Gian Domenico Cassini in 1655², 67 meters long. A hole in the vault throws a spot of sunlight onto that line, and the position of the spot on any given day is the reason the instrument was built.

The panoramic terrace is closed for good after its restoration. Very few guidebooks say so, and with the Asinelli shut as well it removes the second of the two obvious ways to look down on the city.

The oldest university, on a date it calls conventional

The University of Bologna gives 1088³ as the conventional date for the birth of the Studium and calls itself the first university of the western world, under the name Alma Mater Studiorum.

Read the qualifier. The university uses the word conventional because no founding act exists: the date was fixed later, by scholars, to anchor a tradition that grew out of private teaching in the city.

The teaching quarter is still where the students are, around via Zamboni, and that is the part of Bologna a closed tower cannot take away from you. More in Bologna, the porticoes and getting there.