Among artworks of permanent collections

We've just arrived in the city. Where are we going?

Our first stop is the Civic Archaeological Museum, right next to the Basilica of San Petronio, home to a precious collection of Egyptian antiquities and the territory's longest-known memory: Etruscan, Gallic and Roman art in Bologna. The museum displays a wealth of intriguing and meaningful exhibits and materials, such as the tales engraved on parallel bands in the outer walls of the Etruscan situla made of bronze foil, used to enshrine the ashes of the deceased. We are in Room X, Tomb 68. A sacred procession heads towards two musicians, with sacrificial animals , women carrying the essentials for feasting and, towards the end, a military parade. We like to regard it as a 2500-year old invitation to celebrate with them.

If you decide to browse through the exhibits of the Medieval Museum, you are likely to reconsider the idea of Middle ages as the "Dark Centuries". In fact, you will wonder at fantastic artifacts such as sculptures, paintings, ceramics, illuminated manuscripts, weapons, ivory, glass and bronze works that testify to the academic life of the world's first-established University (1088). Let's have a closer look at this marble fragment from jurist Giovanni da Legnano's monumental sarcophagus: we can identify students reading, glancing at the Professor or simply daydreaming. And if we take Pope Boniface VIII's 1301 wooden statue by Manno di Bandini, covered in gold, our eye gets captivated by his dazzling sumptuousness and his acute symbolism, both telling of a distant and intriguing universe.

Which museums do you think are an absolute must?

The international Music Museum and Library is home to the world's last surviving example of printed score (1501, Ottaviano Petrucci), as well as to the three mysterious admission exams taken by a young Mozart to enter the prestigious Accademia Filarmonica.