Le torri mi cascano sul naso …

“Le torri mi cascano sul naso…”: Liszt’s stay in Bologna in 1838

On retracing Liszt’s steps during his two stays in Bologna in 1838 — the first accompanied by his companion Marie d’Agoult — one rediscovers a network of streets, palaces, gardens and artistic legacies that take us back into a world and an extensive city-museum that have in part been irredeemably lost. The juxtaposition between Bologna of the time and that of today offers us new insights into the urban and social fabric of the city and its evolution. At the same time it helps us to identify ancient routes and art destinations that still represent a wide-ranging patrimony always worthy of interest: palaces of the aristocratic and bourgeois élite still privately owned today or, in some important cases, acquired by institutions like the University of Bologna. Over and above his professional task of organising, during his first visit, concerts that would take place in the second, Liszt moved around the heart of Bologna as a typical “traveller”, just like today’s tourist, but also had the opportunity to enter some of the most striking and exclusive palaces as a guest or as a virtuoso pianist, making them resound with his music.

Keywords: Franz Liszt, Bologna in the XIX century, Raffaello’s Santa Cecilia, Gioachino Rossini, Francesco Sampieri