Bologna

Our trip to Bologna would have been fairly unremarkable were it not for the fact that we stumbled into the Bologna foods festival pasta rolling contest. We were merely trying to see the castle: although it looked dwarfed next to the cathedral San Petronio (the 5th largest cathedral in the world), we figured we’d explore inside anyway. It was a castle after all. We were not expecting to be swept into a huge crowd, all filing past tables of pastas, cheeses, and Mortadella (what the rest of the world calls Bologna) to crowd around a couple dozen tables being set up for pasta rolling. After wrestling to the show tables for samples from a Mortadella that was larger than my little brother (yes you, Tom), we too crowded around the tables to watch. Each table got 1kg of flour, 8 eggs, a fork, and a scraper. Each contestant brought their own pasta roller, a long, slender rolling pin without handles- these rolling pins are a traditional wedding gift to brides here as well, as it is the woman of the house who must make the pasta (the rollers are also said to be useful for keeping husbands in line). At the starting bell, everyone starts by shaping a base ring of flour: most are careful not to use the whole kilogram, so that they have some for rolling if the dough gets sticky. Then the eggs are cracked into the center of the flour: all but one person uses all 8. They are mixed into the flour slowly, from the center to the outside, so that the wet eggs are held inside walls of flour until it is thick enough to knead. Kneading takes the longest, as the dough must be strong enough to be rolled incredibly thin, and perfectly smooth. The tables are scraped carefully to prevent any clump of dried egg or flour from making it into the finished ball of smooth, yellow dough. Some people let their dough rest for short periods in between kneading- others knead steadily until sweat breaks out on their forehead. Then the rolling begins: this is where real skill is needed, because as the dough gets thinner and larger, it must be rolled up around the rolling pin, rolled out, then unrolled again and again to keep the entire piece the same thickness. Sadly, we had to leave before the winner was announced. It would be almost an hour before everyone finished rolling out, and then each piece must be judged for overall thickness, smoothness, texture, and finally cooked taste and texture. We only had the afternoon, and had to move on and see other things.

Next we went into the Cathedral San Petronio- the mere height of the building was breathtaking. Although the outside was covered in scaffolding for restoration, you could see that the front wall was only half finished, and though the bottom half was beautifully carved stone, the upper half was plain brick. Apparently, the Pope had cut funding to the cathedral halfway through, as soon as he learned that it was to be bigger than St. Peter’s. The restoration was not to finish the top, only to clean and protect what had been finished originally. Inside, the church had a couple defining features. In one of the large side niches, there is a fresco depicting Dante’s Inferno, from beginning to end. The painting is beautifully detailed, but almost comic book-style in its progression through the story. It also includes the prophet Mohammed, as true to the story, and for this reason the church was almost bombed several years ago. The other defining feature is the world’s longest linear sundial, which stretches across the floor from the center of the front door to the back corner of the church, and reveals the time and approximate date with the sunlight that streams in the highest window. I didn’t find the sundial highly impressive until I overheard an English speaking tour guide explaining its unconventionality: the cathedral was built during a time when the Roman Catholic church was still adamantly against the notion that the Earth was not the center of the universe. To include such a sundial, which could only be functional with correct calculations of the Earth’s position and rotation, showed one of the first daring steps forward in the church’s acceptance of science. Bologna, after all, was considered one of the most modern and scientific-minded communities of the time. And perhaps, we mused, the builders of San Petronio had to garner support from the wealthy local community after the Pope cut off official funding.