Via Zamboni

From the Two Towers to Porta San Donato, the heart of the university district, Via Zamboni, runs for one kilometer, named after Luigi Zamboni, patriot and creator of the tricolor of the Italian flag.

Along the street there are some of the most important places of art and culture in the city, starting with the sixteenth-century Palazzo Malvezzi de' Medici, headquarters of the Metropolitan City, Palazzo Magnani with its impressive picture gallery, the G.B. Martini Conservatory of Music, where for ten years Gioachino Rossini maintained the position of “honorary perpetual consultant”, and again the Basilica of San Giacomo Maggiore with the attached Oratory of Santa Cecilia.

At the center of the street, on Piazza Verdi, stands the eighteenth-century Municipal Theater of Antonio Galli da Bibbiena, which in 1871 was the first in Italy to represent an opera by Wagner, the Lohengrin; behind, the Garden of Failure, built on the mounds of Palazzo Bentivoglio, destroyed by citizens during the expulsion of the powerful family from the city in the Renaissance period.

Further on, Palazzo Poggi, the headquarters of the University, and the National Art Gallery, accompanied by the Academy of Fine Arts, on which opens the little square named after Roberto Raviola, aka Magnus, one of the greatest Italian cartoonists.