Bologna is City of Music

The remarkable classical music seasons, the contemporary music and jazz music program, the song-writers, rock-bands and other musicians who flock to the city, all contribute to making Bologna a unique centre for music. Why do not feel like Farinelli, Rossini and the young Mozart did? Between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century, Bologna was a mandatory destination for Europe’s great musicians. In 2006 Bologna has been recognized by UNESCO as “City of Music Creativity” in fact music has always had a central role in Bologna, as it testified by the Martini Music Academy, the International Music Museum a Library and the Eighteen century city Opera House. Start this enchanting music journey from the Conservatoire Giovan Battista Martini, one of the most ancient Italian conservatories. Among its first students there was the young Rossini in 1808-1809.

Keep walking into music history taking that exhibition path that winds through the splendid rooms of the “International Music Museum and Library of Music” that illustrates about six centuries of history of the European music. There are over one hundred paintings of famous musicians, a prestigious collection of antique musical instruments integrated with a large selection of valuable historical documents. Many unique and important works can be admired like, the mysterious Mozart’s entrance examination (the original antiphon he wrote to become a member of the Accademia Filarmonica).

Get the most of this music journey spending a special evening at the Opera at the Bologna Opera House, the Teatro Comunale. Different operas were performed here by Rossini as well as the Italian premiere of The African Woman by Meyerbeer (1865) and Don Carlos (1867) by Giuseppe Verdi, to whom the square opposite the theatre is entitled.

Highlights:

• Teatro Comunale
• International Museum and Library of Music
  
• Jazz music