Some of Bologna's secrets

Before starting my internship on Monday, I had some time to be a bit of a tourist. I'd already spent a couple of days looking round the city on my own, but this had mainly involved locating all the places I needed to find (my work, the bus stops, Grom) and just gazing aimlessy at the pretty buildings. On Friday however, there was a free guided tour of the city for Erasmus students and interns, followed by apperitivo in one of the local bars. It was great meeting other students from all corners of the world who were all going through the same experience - including one girl from the same village as me in England, which was completely bizarre! But as well as new people, we got to know Bologna itself a bit better; the tour was given by a student from the university who promised to tell us some of the city's 'secrets'.

Piazza Maggiore

One of the most surprising things to learn was that Bologna is actually, like Venice, a city built on canals. Today you can no longer see its waterways as they are hidden underground, but when you go into the city's public library, below the glass floor you can see the remains of the original city, on top of which today's Bologna was built. This was my favourite bit of the tour, mostly because the idea of lost or underground cities is something that one of the authors I'm studying at the moment, W G Sebald, talks about in his novel Austerlitz. The main character is fascinated by them, seeing them both as a link to the lost past, and also to the world of the dead. I'm not sure what it would be like seeing Bologna's subterranean sights, but there are various tours you can do to look at the ancient baths, resevoirs and aqueducts, and it's definitely something I want to do while I'm here.

Because of Bologna's waterways, one of the symbols of the city is Neptune, who can be seen in statue form just next to the main square. The statue was built to make the central square more beautiful, and to 'serve the people', as its inscription explains; it was a pretty big deal to the people of Bologna, and is known as Il Gigante. The story goes that when it was commissioned in the sixteenth century, the Church demanded it be designed with more modest proportions in the groin area than the sculptor had planned. But our guide took us to a spot in Piazza Nettuno, saying that the sculptor decided to have a joke at the Church's expense, and he told us to look again...

Apparently, there was a convent on the corner of this street, meaning that when the nuns looked out of its windows, or walked into Piazza Maggiore, they were greeted with a rather risqué view of the statue - for anyone who's wondering, that's actually the thumb of Neptune's outstretched hand.

The existence of the canals under the city, and the racy statue, are just two examples of how there's a lot more to Bologna than meets the eye - I'm sure there'll be lots more for me to learn about it over the next 4 months!