The square overlooking via Farini responds to a new need of the late nineteenth century: to give more breath and dignity to the buildings of the rising economic power and to introduce green oasis into the urban fabric.

It's the era in which the green city begins to become the subject of public debate, to be thought of as part of the city itself and not as something external.

Piazza Minghetti stands where once was via Ponte di Ferro (iron bridge street), which took its name from a bridge that passed over the Aposa canal that still flows under the square. It was obtained from the demolition of an entire block in 1876.

The project was entrusted to Ernesto Balbo Bertone, count of Sambuy, councilor for public works of Turin and former designer of the Margherita Gardens in Bologna.

The garden was built between 1893 and 1896, but underwent a reduction in size and a more formal appearance than the count's project.

Inside the square is the statue of Marco Minghetti, built by Giulio Monteverde in 1896. Minghetti is known above all as the Minister of Finance, for having been the first to balance the State Budget. Of the inauguration of the monument, in 1896, there is a short film documentary, the first film shot in the city of Bologna.

The square has been remodeled several times: in 1911 the post office building was built, in the 1930s the fence that surrounded it was removed and the central flowerbed was later removed.

Today, the square oews its design to the restyling by Glauco Gresleri, who preserved its beautiful monumental plane tree and two ginkgo biloba.

 

The Aldrovandi farm was founded in 2001 in Monteveglio in the Montebudello area due to the great passion for wine of Federico Aldrovandi.

In the beginning, just one hectare of vineyard designed and built with the aim of producing a single wine: Merlot Alto Vanto.

Malolactic fermentation and aging in wood. It is an elegant, refined and persistent red, with a remarkable aromatic complexity and a persuasive mouth closure. It's the perfect companion of a well prepared cotoletta alla bolognese.

A magical sip in which the fluctuations of Nature are perfectly combined with moods and worries about the difficulty of the harvest. An unmistakable style in which the humility of the winemaker and the generosity of the grape blend together in a proud expression of a wine that is always different but with a unique and recognizable identity.

Merlot, a grape variety easy to manage, simple to make wine, ordinary to drink but which sometimes manages to reveal its innermost nature, making a wine extraordinary and enriching the personality of those who produce it: “My limits are born in Merlot. In return, he enhances my normality ”(Federico Aldrovandi, winemaker in Monteveglio).

Three stories, a chorus of voices gathered in the tavern to capture the moment of an evening with friends. From the Thirties, with their hunger and their energy, up to the disillusioned threshold of the new millennium, passing by the hopes of the Seventies, three bunches of friends alternate around a set table. Jokes, memories, arguements,  love, toasts.

“It was many years ago, in the late thirties. 

"Do not expect great events from the things I will be telling, lightning twists or dramatic endings or initial mysteries that then, little by little, unfold and show themselves in all their enigmatic clarity": this is how Francesco Guccini warns us, at the opening of the first of the three stories that make up this book. “It is simply the story of a dinner, and of some friends; a story almost like the fairy tales our parents used to tell us as children, already heard many times but that we loved to be told again and again, for the sole pleasure of being there to listen ... "

Francesco Guccini weaves three stories that become one and gives life to new, memorable, bizarre heroes of his epic of lost time.

A legendary singer-songwriter of more than a generation, his activity as a writer is also one of the most original and evocative experiences of the Italian literary scene of the last decade. Occasionally also an actor, author of soundtracks and comics. Until the mid-1980s he taught Italian at Dickinson College in Bologna, an off-campus school of the University of Pennsylvania. He also worked as a lecturer at the Bologna branch of Johns Hopkins University (Washington, DC, USA). He lives between Modena, Pàvana and Bologna.