MAGIC BOLOGNA
A promenade inside the magic mysteries of the city

It is maybe really written in the stars: Bologna is meant to harvest small and originaI records which make it unique in the world. Bologna is the learned, with its oldest western university; Bologna is the towered with its tallest mediaeval tower, the Asinelli tower. Bologna is the hiddenst too, with its more than 40 kilometres of shadowy and meandering arcades. Many other things allow to think that Bologna has another primacy that of being magic. Let's now get into the arcane, where each evidence is perhaps less neat.
Longer than 900 years ago, here, where the plain of the Po river leads smoothly to the Appenines, the University ALMA MATER STUDIORUM was bOrn.
To theology science where then added the sciences of medicine, mathematics and astrology. These new three disciplines were studied in buildings located where now is Via IV Novembre.
At those times, a medical doctor could not prevent being also an astrologer: the correspondence between stars and good or bad health was, to the science the, something more than a simple assumption.
In Via IV Novembre itself there are some other aspects linked to the city magically magic. Inside the Church of S. Salvatore lie the mortal remains of Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called "il Guercino". The painter who immortalises in his paintings the mystery beside the poetry.
"Et in Arcadia Ego", was his work imbued with hermetic symbolism: two shepherds, a grave and a skull, and the obscure sentence: and in Arcadia I...
Not far from the church a patrician mansion saw the light of day of a true "magician" Guglielmo Marconi. To him the honour and onus of both broadcasting the first intelligent signal in the space a way to tell the stars that we are here and to launch in the imaginary topographic map of the Universe, the first electromagnetic waves fit for irradiating a message from this city, from its country: Pontecchio.
It is then, within few meters that the memory of ancient astrology schools weds to the modern history of broadcasting the human thoughts into the ether.
A few steps more and we reach some other sites of Bologna's magic world.
Here we are in Piazza Maggiore. Each thing has his history and each history has its fairy side that not always is happy. Building Re Enzo is where the long imprisonment of Federico II's young son took place.
Its Magna curia, its court, was the meeting point of Greek, Arabic and Hebraic traditions for a magnificent dream of sacred and secular power that broke up within the walls of this building that saw the beginning of the end of its dynasty and its empire, pregnant with magical and exotic beliefs.
On a side ofPiazza Maggiore itself, is San Petronio, the Church of Bologneses.
Unfinished in its magnificence, it was blocked not to realise a challenge to the papacy of Rome.
On the other hand the challenge between catholic and laic worlds has always seen Bologna and its citizens intensively involved.
In S. Petronio's Church, where it is hard to feel frightened notwithstanding its large dimensions, there religious, cabalistic, esoteric and scientific echoes chase and interlace. There is the splendid sun-dial made by Giovanni Domenico Cassini and Domenico Guglielmini who finally ascertained the vernal equinox; a water watch, those that are usually built more to transmit an esoteric tradition than to measure a right hour; the nine steps of S. Petronio and its 22 chapels: numbers that chase themselves between sacred and profane.
Adjoined to Maggiore Square, it' s located the fountain of Neptune, made by Giambologna.
In ancient papal Bologna an absolutely earthen god of the sea: this too seems to be a magical recall, even if not in the intentions of the builders, at least in the apparent history of Bologna which is strongly tied up with water element. In the past the city was an incredible interlacing of channels leading the water of rivers Reno, Aposa and Savena for the needs of life and work of Bologna.
The memories of water element, that together with air, earth and fire build the esoteric universe, are linked not only to still existing names of streets (port's Street, Navel's Street, Rialto's Street), but also to the collective imaginary which couples to this element the idea of eternity; water springs from the earth, and even making long and mysterious courses that seem changing their shape, it remains always the same.
The gurgling of its running is a divine oracle to which all mystical cultures have taken inspiration from. At less than a hundred meters from Piazza Maggiore, in a kind of basin artistically cobbled, we find the building of S. Stefano, also known as "Seven Churches".
The liturgical symbology that represents, made it one of the devotional centres more important in the mediaeval world. They say that the plant has been founded by S. Petronio in V century and that it reproduces symbolically and realistically the places of Jesus' Passion.
The earthy and celestial Jerusalem are painted in few meters, dominated by S. Giovanni in Monte a very ancient church, placed on a hill, and which could represent the apex of christian passion: the Golgota.
Here the magic,the good one, which is founded on taking note of a wonder, reaches its maximum.
Here it is possible to imagine the inconceivable and to create plausible tales, as the one of the marble tub, known as the "Pilato' s basin" in which the earthy judge of Christ, according to tradition, washed his hands out a verdict that he did not want to give.
Maybe it really exists a non-casualness in the place where this small Jerusalem is located and this is a site always full of sacred energy.
The seven columns of cipolin marble that support the main plant, together with an equal number build some centuries later, were those of a Roman temple.
Dedicated to Isis, the Egyptian goddess entered into the Roman cult, wife and sister of Osiride, who died and rose grace to her to become father of Horus, who became later his revenger.
Charged with vibrations and in a particular spiritual dimension, let's walk under the long arcades of Bologna, apparently without any solution of continuity.
The light under these arcades often historical, is very peculiar.
Ashen-grey as moon-light. Let' s reach now Saragozza Door, one of the twelve ancient doors of Bologna (twelve as the signs of the zodiac). Here, starts an arcade, a long queue of 666 arcades, that leads to San Lucas's Church, on a hill. 666 arcades, the number of the Big Beast in the Apocalypse of Giovanni: is it only an architectural casualness this number of a profound symbolic meaning. Many are ready to state the contrary.
Up there, the mountain is called "the guardian hill" and is venerated the painting of a black Madonna offar and prodigious origins.
The tradition wants this to be done by Lucas the Evangelist, disciple of Apostles and more than a painter, a medicine doctor. And it is in this person of saint, painter and doctor that we feel like being gone back to the beginning of our history, with the ALMA MATER STUDIORUM schools of medicine and astrology.
On the other hand, in magic, the courses are always concentric or circular, portions of an infinite hyperbole.