What is now one of the main shopping streets in Bologna is the result of the urban works foreseen in the Town Plan of 1889 and started in 1913. The commercial vocation of this area had already been alive for centuries and the construction of a wide road aligned with the Due Torri and via Ugo Bassi increased this aspect considerably.

Along with Via Ugo Bassi and Via Indipendenza, Via Rizzoli is one of the most important streets in the center of Bologna. It represents a part of the ancient Decumanus Maximus of the Roman Bologna, whose urban layout is still clearly visible.

Today it connects the Two Towers to Piazza del Nettuno and is crossed by numerous bus lines.

Only one of the two sides of the street has a portico, unlike most of the streets in Bologna, where porticos are on both sides.

Along Via Rizzoli you will find many shops, from clothing to perfumery through bookshops.

The street is named after Doctor Francesco Rizzoli, a famous orthopedist who lived in the nineteenth century, founder of the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute, today one of the best orthopedic hospitals in Italy and in the world.

 

The Isolani family, merchants from Cyprus, arrived in Bologna in 1200.

The family, whose surname still reminds the origins (Isolani = Islanders), mindful of the entrepreneurial past and eager to keep the old traditions, is today engaged in many and different activities that exploit the heritage that their long history has given them.

Old papers, found in the family archives, document that  on the hill of Monte Vecchio, ancient family property located in the splendid hills above Zola Predosa, the Isolani had been producing wine since 1456.

Palazzo di Montevecchio is a wine from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes skilfully pruned and thinned to obtain the appropriate concentration, hand-picked and carefully selected, before ageing three years in French oak barrels from Allier and Nevers.

The aromas are complex and harmonious with notes of blackberry jam, vanilla, cinnamon and licorice, pleasantly persistent, soft, perfectly balanced.

The Montevecchio Isolani vineyards are located at an altitude of 210 meters above sea level on the first slopes of the Emilian Apennines, on a sandy clayey sedimentary soil that originally formed the seabed, as evidenced by the fossil shells present in abundance.

The North-East exposure, while ensuring great brightness, preserves the vineyards from excessive summer heat allowing slow ripening of the bunches with maximum accumulation of aroma and flavor.

Late 1990s, southern Italy and four boys in their early twenties. Thus begins the first book of Atlante Freddo (Cold Atlas) criminal trilogy. Vincenzino is a young thief, who aspires to join local criminal organizations. He must land some striking blows in order to make his criminal record eligible, and so he decides to kidnap Francesca, the daughter of a well-known and wealthy local gentleman with the help of Pino, Nicola and Chiara.

But Francesca is the wrong hostage.

Chiara, the trait d'union of the trilogy of books, is a dark-haired girl, pretty but with a scruffy appearance, convinced that there is something wrong with her. Within the baby gang she has a role that she doesn't like, she doesn't like being Francesca's guardian, but sometimes friendships are born in the strangest situations.

But events are unpredictable, just like the life of those who live on the margins, and the best solution is to run away. So you jump on a train, live new and strange situations, make new friends, listen to life stories, take a piece of the road together, sometimes the memories appear but shortly they pass. Only the violence remains. Violence which is the common thread that walks alongside the life of Chiara and of those who surround her.

Luigi Bernardi (1953–2013) was a Bolognese publisher, writer, essayist, translator. He created publishing houses, directed series and founded magazines that have made the history of comics and crime novelistic in Italy.