Heart of the city, Piazza Maggiore is the result of centuries-old transformations that gradually enriched it with important buildings: the Basilica of San Petronio, the Palazzo dei Notai, the Palazzo d'Accursio, the Palazzo del Podestà and the Palazzo dei Banchi.

It dates back to 1200, when the Municipality began to acquire houses and land to build a square which, on one hand, should have represented the importance of the municipal institution and, on the other hand,  the citizens of Bologna needed a place to be used both as a market and as a meeting place in general. Piazza Maggiore was one of the first squares built after the fall of the Roman Empire. It assumed its current form only in the 1400s, while in the 16th century the entire area was further enlarged under the guidance of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo with the creations of the Piazza del Nettuno, the Giambologna fountain of Nettuno and the Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio.

Over the centuries, the square has seen the promulgation of laws, the imposition of sentences, the execution of capital sentences, the pause of popes and emperors. But piazza Maggiore was also used to celebrate carnival, to rejoice at the end of the war, to cry for the dead of the massacres, to carry out religious rites. Here the people manifest for their own claims or to renew the memory of dramatic events.

The whole history of Bologna has passed and continues to pass through here.

Touch the earth, feel the vineyard.

Each plant, to be interpreted. Interventions to be dosed.

Equipment and machines to understand.

Decisions to be made, every moment.

The humility of learning day after day.

This is agriculture.

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FLORA ITALICA is a tribute to the illustrious naturalist Antonio Bertoloni (1775 - 1868), author of the homonymous monumental treatise on botany which is still a scientific reference on the subject today.
A persuasive wine with an elegant femininity and with an important personality, in balance between the intense fruit component and the acidity of the Barbera variety, native to Italy and always present in the Bolognese Hills.

Spontaneous fermentation followed by 15 days of skin contact maceration. After racking and malolactic fermentation, all the wine is aged at first in steel, then in large Slavonian oak barrels for 6-12 months. After several months in the bottle, it's put on the market.

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Donatella Agostoni, conductor of the company, is the grandson of the artist Paolo Manaresi (1908-1991), painter and engraver, chosen by Giorgio Morandi as his successor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna.
A great artist of the twentieth century. The cellar is dedicated to him. 

Los Angeles, it's the night the Italian director Achille Cordova wins the Oscar award for Best Foreign Film. In the same hours, in Bologna, the 35-year-old Vasco Vitale watches his idol, Achille Cordova, receive the statuette on TV and, when the camera frames the man next to Cordova, Vasco recognizes him. He is his former high school friend, Simone Bianchi ... and immediately wonders: what the fuck is Bianchi doing there on the Oscar Night?

Meanwhile, in Marradi, in Cordova's house the director's second wife, Marianna, is killed. From then on, the lives of Achille Cordova, his troupe and Vasco Vitale will never be the same.

 

Gianluca Morozzi (Bologna, 1971) is an Italian writer, cartoonist, musician and radio host. He is also a big fan of Bologna FC.

If he didn't do the job he does, he would be «a serial killer, probably» and therefore «it has gone better this way for the world».

«In Bologna ideas come out of every portico and every wall. A third of my ideas are born at night in a tavern, another third by train».