Emilia-Romagna
Based on Wikipedia: Emilia-Romagna
In 2018, Lonely Planet declared Emilia-Romagna the best place to visit in Europe. Not Rome. Not Paris. Not the Greek islands. A region most travelers have never heard of, tucked between the Alps and the Apennines in northern Italy, where the locals eat tortellini in brodo and the garages produce Ferraris.
This isn't hyperbole. Emilia-Romagna is one of the wealthiest regions in all of Europe, boasting the third-highest gross domestic product per capita in Italy. It's home to the world's oldest university. Several of its cities are UNESCO World Heritage sites. And it gave birth to the Italian flag.
But what makes this region truly remarkable isn't any single superlative. It's the way two thousand years of history have layered upon each other like the sheets of pasta in a proper Bolognese lasagna—each era leaving its mark, each influence absorbed and transformed into something distinctly, stubbornly local.
The Road That Named a Region
The name Emilia-Romagna is actually two names joined together, each one a ghost of Rome.
In 187 BCE, a Roman consul named Marcus Aemilius Lepidus completed a road stretching from Piacenza in the northwest to Rimini on the Adriatic coast. The Via Aemilia, as it came to be called, cut straight through the Po Valley like a surveyor's line, and the territory along it took the consul's name: Emilia.
The road still exists today, more or less. It forms the spine of the modern Via Emilia, and the cities that grew up along it—Parma, Modena, Bologna, Forlì—remain the region's population centers. Two-thirds of all inhabitants live along this ancient corridor.
Romagna has a different origin story. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century, Ravenna didn't collapse with it. The city became the capital of Byzantine Italy, an outpost of the Eastern Roman Empire—what we call the Byzantine Empire, though its inhabitants simply called themselves Romans. The Lombards, Germanic tribes who controlled much of the peninsula, called this Byzantine territory Romània: the land of the Romans. The name stuck, even after the Byzantines left.
So Emilia-Romagna carries in its very name the memory of a road builder and an empire's twilight. A practical Roman engineer and the last gasp of Roman civilization in the West.
Before Rome
The Romans weren't the first to recognize this land's potential. The Etruscans were here before them, that enigmatic civilization whose language we still cannot fully read. After the Etruscans came the Gauls, Celtic peoples who swept down from the north and made this region their own until Rome pushed them out.
What drew these successive civilizations was geography. The Po Valley is Italy's largest plain, formed over millennia as the sea retreated and rivers deposited their sediment. It's almost perfectly flat farmland, watered by dozens of rivers flowing down from the Apennine Mountains. In ancient times, much of it was marshland—difficult to inhabit but fantastically fertile once drained.
The people of this region have spent two thousand years wrestling with that geography. Draining marshes. Building canals. Diverting rivers. The landscape you see today isn't natural; it's the product of generations of backbreaking labor. The flat agricultural plains around Ferrara and Piacenza weren't always there. They were made.
A Tale of Two Powers
After Rome fell, the region split between two masters.
Emilia, the western portion, fell under the control of the Lombards. These Germanic warriors established a kingdom that stretched across northern Italy, with their capital at Pavia. The Lombard kingdom flourished until 774, when Charlemagne, king of the Franks, crossed the Alps and overthrew the Lombard king. Emilia became part of Charlemagne's vast empire, and later part of the Holy Roman Empire under the German emperor Otto I.
Romagna took a different path. For two centuries, from roughly 540 to 751, Ravenna served as the western capital of the Byzantine Empire. The Exarchate of Ravenna, as this territory was called, was technically ruled from Constantinople—modern Istanbul—by emperors who spoke Greek and followed Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Ravenna's famous mosaics, those glittering gold-backed images of emperors and saints, date from this period.
Then came a gift that would shape the region for a thousand years.
In 754, a Frankish king named Pepin—Charlemagne's father—conquered the territory around Ravenna and donated it to the Pope. This "Donation of Pepin" created the Papal States, a political entity in which the Pope served not just as spiritual leader but as temporal ruler. Romagna would remain under papal control, with interruptions, until Italian unification in the nineteenth century.
Cities Against Emperors
By the twelfth century, something new was stirring in northern Italy. The cities were growing rich.
Trade routes crisscrossed the region. The Po River connected the interior to the Adriatic and thus to Venice, that maritime republic whose ships reached Constantinople and beyond. Money flowed. A merchant class emerged. And with wealth came ambition.
The Holy Roman Emperors, descendants of Charlemagne's line, still claimed authority over northern Italy. But their actual power was slipping. The cities began to assert their independence, forming governments called communes that represented the interests of merchants and artisans rather than feudal lords.
The papacy, seeing an opportunity to weaken imperial power, supported these rebellious cities. In 1167, a coalition of northern Italian cities formed the Lombard League to resist the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The league won, forcing the emperor to recognize significant urban autonomy.
This struggle birthed one of medieval Italy's most enduring conflicts: the war between Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Guelphs supported the Pope; the Ghibellines supported the Emperor. But over time, these labels became tribal identities that meant different things in different cities. Families were Guelph or Ghibelline the way some families are Yankees fans or Red Sox fans—not because of any current political calculation but because their fathers and grandfathers had been.
The conflict divided cities for centuries. It also produced extraordinary art, extraordinary literature, and extraordinary violence.
The World's First University
In the midst of this chaos, something remarkable happened in Bologna.
Around 1088—the exact date is disputed—students in Bologna began organizing themselves into groups to hire teachers of law. This was revolutionary. In most of medieval Europe, the Church controlled education. But in Bologna, the students were in charge. They formed organizations called nationes, elected their own leaders, and collectively bargained with professors over salaries and schedules.
This was the University of Bologna, the oldest continuously operating university in the world. It predates Oxford by decades, Paris by nearly a century. The word "university" itself comes from the Latin universitas, meaning a guild or corporation—in this case, a corporation of students.
Bologna specialized in law, particularly the rediscovered Roman law texts that were reshaping European legal thought. Students came from across Europe to study the Corpus Juris Civilis, the legal code of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. These students then returned home and brought Roman legal concepts with them, transforming the legal systems of England, France, and Germany.
The university's influence extended beyond law. Medicine, theology, philosophy—all found a home in Bologna. The city became a center of intellectual life, attracting scholars and thinkers from across the continent. That tradition continues today. Bologna's nickname, la dotta, means "the learned one."
The Age of the Princes
As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, power in Emilia-Romagna consolidated around a handful of noble families.
The Este family ruled Ferrara from the thirteenth century until 1598. They were warriors, diplomats, and above all patrons of the arts. The Este court attracted some of the greatest writers of the Italian Renaissance. Ludovico Ariosto, author of Orlando Furioso, spent decades in Este service. So did Torquato Tasso, whose Jerusalem Delivered became one of the most widely read poems in Europe.
The Este left behind spectacular palaces, including the Castello Estense in Ferrara, a massive brick fortress surrounded by a moat. They also left behind a reputation for sophisticated brutality—Duke Alfonso I had his brothers executed for conspiracy, and the Este dungeons were famous even in an age when dungeons were common.
In Rimini, the Malatesta family built the Tempio Malatestiano, a church that the condottiere Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta intended as his personal mausoleum. Pope Pius II, who despised Sigismondo, conducted a reverse canonization—formally declaring him a citizen of Hell.
Parma and Piacenza fell under the control of the Farnese family, which had produced Pope Paul III. Modena had its own duchy. Ravenna remained under papal control, governed by legates sent from Rome.
Each court competed with the others. Competition meant warfare, yes, but also art. If the Este had Ariosto, the other courts needed their own poets. If Ferrara had beautiful frescoes, Parma needed better ones. This rivalry drove an explosion of cultural production that transformed the region's cities into galleries of Renaissance achievement.
The Birth of a Flag
In 1796, a young Corsican general named Napoleon Bonaparte swept into northern Italy with an army of revolutionary France. Within months, the old order had collapsed. The Este were gone from Ferrara. The papal legates fled Romagna. A new age had begun.
Napoleon reorganized the conquered territories into client republics with constitutions modeled on revolutionary France. One of these was the Cispadane Republic, created from territories south of the Po River—roughly equivalent to modern Emilia-Romagna.
On January 7, 1797, the parliament of this short-lived republic adopted a flag. It had three vertical stripes: green, white, and red. A deputy named Giuseppe Compagnoni had proposed the design. The green, he argued, represented the plains; the white, the snowy Alps; the red, the blood of patriots.
The Cispadane Republic lasted less than a year before Napoleon merged it with other territories. But the flag survived. Today, the Italian tricolor—green, white, and red—flies over a nation of sixty million people. Giuseppe Compagnoni is remembered as the "father of the Italian flag," and Emilia-Romagna is remembered as its birthplace.
Unification and Its Discontents
Napoleon fell. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 restored the old rulers. But ideas proved harder to suppress than armies.
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, movements for Italian unification gained strength. In 1848, revolutions swept across Europe, and in northern Italy, rebels rose against Austrian rule. They were suppressed, but the idea of a unified Italy proved impossible to kill.
In 1859 and 1860, a combination of Piedmontese military power, French support, and popular uprisings finally brought the Italian peninsula together. Emilia-Romagna joined the Kingdom of Italy in 1860. For the first time since the fall of Rome, the region was part of a unified Italian state.
Not everyone celebrated. The Pope lost the Papal States and retreated to the Vatican, declaring himself a prisoner. Conservative Catholics viewed unification as an attack on the Church. This anticlerical legacy would shape Emilia-Romagna's politics for generations.
The Red Region
After World War I, Emilia-Romagna became a battleground between left and right.
The years 1919 and 1920 saw the Biennio Rosso—the "two red years"—when socialist workers occupied factories and peasants seized land. The established order seemed on the verge of collapse. In response, a new political movement emerged, led by a journalist from Predappio, a small town in Romagna.
His name was Benito Mussolini.
Mussolini's Fascist movement drew heavily on his home region. Italo Balbo, who would become one of Fascism's most prominent leaders, was from Ferrara. Dino Grandi, another Fascist hierarch, was from Bologna. The region that had spawned socialist rebellion now supplied key figures for its suppression.
The Fascist regime lasted until 1943, when Allied forces invaded Italy and Mussolini's government collapsed. But the war wasn't over. German forces occupied northern Italy and established a puppet Fascist state. What followed was nearly two years of brutal occupation.
Emilia-Romagna saw some of the war's worst atrocities. At Marzabotto, a town in the Apennine foothills south of Bologna, German troops murdered 770 civilians in September and October 1944. It was one of the largest massacres of civilians in Western Europe during World War II.
The resistance to German occupation was fierce. Partisan bands operated throughout the mountains, supplied by Allied airdrops and supported by local populations. This resistance would shape the region's politics for decades. When Italians voted in the first postwar elections, Emilia-Romagna went overwhelmingly for the Italian Communist Party.
The region became part of what Italians called the "Red Belt" or "Red Quadrilateral"—Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marche, where the Communist Party dominated local politics. This wasn't Soviet-style communism; Italy's Communist Party operated within democratic institutions and developed a distinctive Italian approach that emphasized local government and cooperative enterprises.
Bologna became famous for its Communist municipal government, which provided high-quality public services and fostered cooperative businesses. The city's Communists were practical administrators, not revolutionaries. But the ideological conflict of the Cold War meant that even moderate leftism attracted violent opposition.
On August 2, 1980, a bomb exploded in the waiting room of Bologna's central train station. Eighty-five people died; more than two hundred were wounded. Investigators eventually traced the attack to a neofascist terrorist group with connections to Italian intelligence services. The Bologna massacre, as it came to be called, remains one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in European history.
The Land Itself
Let's step back from politics and look at the geography that shapes daily life.
Emilia-Romagna covers about 22,500 square kilometers—roughly the size of New Jersey. Nearly half of this area is flat plain, the southern edge of the Po Valley. Another quarter is mountainous, part of the Apennine range that forms Italy's spine. The remaining quarter is hilly, transitional terrain between plain and peak.
The mountains aren't dramatic by Alpine standards. Only three peaks exceed 2,000 meters: Monte Cimone at 2,165 meters, Monte Cusna at 2,121, and Alpe di Succiso at 2,017. But they create weather patterns that make the Po Valley one of the foggiest places in Europe, and they've historically served as barriers separating Emilia-Romagna from Tuscany to the south.
The geology is complex. Thermal springs bubble up throughout the region, remnants of ancient volcanic activity. The northern coastal areas include lagoons and saline flats, habitats for flamingos and other wetland birds. The mountains feature dramatic calanchi—badlands created by erosion, where soft clay has been carved into otherworldly shapes.
Water defines everything. The Po River, Italy's longest, forms the region's northern boundary for 263 kilometers. Dozens of smaller rivers flow down from the Apennines, and an intricate system of canals distributes water across the agricultural plain. Managing this water—preventing floods, draining marshes, irrigating fields—has occupied the region's inhabitants for millennia.
Motor Valley
Emilia-Romagna's landscape produces more than food.
Between Bologna and Modena lies a concentration of automotive excellence unmatched anywhere in the world. Ferrari is headquartered in Maranello. Lamborghini is in Sant'Agata Bolognese. Maserati operates in Modena. Pagani, maker of hypercars costing millions of euros, is in San Cesario sul Panaro. Ducati builds motorcycles in Bologna.
This cluster didn't happen by accident. The region's metalworking tradition dates to the Renaissance, when armories and foundries served the warring city-states. During the early twentieth century, this expertise shifted to engines. Enzo Ferrari, founder of the company that bears his name, was born in Modena in 1898. Ferruccio Lamborghini was born in Renazzo, near Ferrara, in 1916.
The industry transformed the regional economy. Today, "Motor Valley" is an official marketing brand, and tourists come specifically to visit the factories and museums of these legendary marques. The Ferrari Museum in Maranello receives hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.
The Food
Ask Italians where to eat, and many will point to Emilia-Romagna.
The region's contributions to global cuisine are staggering. Parmigiano-Reggiano—what Americans call Parmesan cheese—can only be made in designated provinces of Emilia-Romagna (plus a small area of Lombardy). The production methods are regulated with obsessive precision. Each wheel is inspected, graded, and marked with a fire brand certifying its origin. Counterfeits are illegal.
Prosciutto di Parma, that silky, dry-cured ham, comes from pigs raised and processed in the Parma area according to strictly defined standards. Balsamic vinegar—real balsamic, not the cheap imitations—is made only in Modena and Reggio Emilia, aged for years or decades in wooden barrels.
Then there's the pasta. Bologna gave the world tagliatelle (long, flat noodles), tortellini (small stuffed pasta said to resemble Venus's navel), and lasagne (layered pasta with ragù and béchamel). The Bolognese ragù that accompanies these pastas is nothing like the meat sauce Americans might expect—it's a slow-cooked mixture of minced beef and pork, soffritto, tomato, wine, and milk, simmered for hours until the flavors meld.
Each city has its specialties. Modena has cotechino and zampone, sausages served at New Year's. Ferrara has salama da sugo, a fermented sausage so specific to the city that it rarely travels. Romagna has piadina, flatbread filled with cured meats and squacquerone cheese.
This culinary heritage isn't museum-piece gastronomy. It's daily life. Emilia-Romagna consistently ranks among Italy's wealthiest regions, and its inhabitants spend their money on food.
The Beach and the City
Every summer, millions of Europeans descend on the Adriatic coast.
Rimini is the most famous destination, a resort city whose beaches stretch for fifteen kilometers. Nearby Riccione, Cesenatico, and Cervia offer similar attractions: sand, sun, nightclubs, and seafood restaurants. This "Riviera Romagnola" is one of Europe's most popular seaside tourism destinations, drawing visitors from Germany, Russia, and across Italy.
The coastal tourism industry transformed Romagna's economy in the second half of the twentieth century. What had been a relatively poor agricultural region became prosperous, and the coastline became densely urbanized. Today, the population along the Adriatic is nearly as dense as along the Via Emilia.
Meanwhile, the inland cities cultivate a different kind of tourism. Bologna draws visitors to its medieval towers, its endless arcaded streets (the longest in the world), and its university district. Ravenna's Byzantine mosaics are UNESCO World Heritage sites, the best-preserved examples of early Christian art anywhere. Ferrara's Renaissance walls and palaces attract architecture enthusiasts. Modena has its Romanesque cathedral, its balsamic vinegar tastings, and its Ferrari connections.
The region receives visitors year-round: beach tourists in summer, culture tourists in spring and fall, food tourists always.
A Changing Population
Emilia-Romagna today has about 4.5 million inhabitants. The population is slightly older than the Italian average—nearly a quarter are over sixty-five—and the birthrate is low. Like most of wealthy Europe, the region depends increasingly on immigration to maintain its workforce.
About 15 percent of residents are foreign-born. The largest immigrant communities come from Albania, Morocco, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. These newcomers work in the region's factories, farms, and service industries. Integration has been relatively successful by European standards, though tensions exist.
Between 1876 and 1976, the population flow ran the other direction. About 1.2 million people emigrated from Emilia-Romagna, seeking better lives in the Americas, in northern Europe, in Australia. The descendants of those emigrants sometimes return as tourists, searching for ancestors in parish records and eating the foods their great-grandparents remembered.
Languages
Standard Italian is the official language, but it's not the only one spoken.
Emilian-Romagnol is what linguists call a "linguistic continuum"—a set of related dialects that shade into each other across the region. The dialects of Emilia and the dialects of Romagna are distinct enough that speakers from opposite ends of the region might struggle to understand each other, yet close enough that linguists group them together.
These aren't corrupted Italian. They're separate languages, descendants of Latin that evolved along different paths than Tuscan Italian. Emilian-Romagnol is part of the Gallo-Italic family, related to Lombard, Piedmontese, and Ligurian—the languages of northwestern Italy. Technical features distinguish these languages from standard Italian: systematic vowel raising, diphthongization of Latin vowels, widespread loss of unstressed vowels.
Younger generations increasingly speak only standard Italian. The dialects survive mainly among older rural populations and as markers of local identity. But they persist. Regional pride runs deep, and the sounds of Emilian-Romagnol remain part of the region's cultural landscape.
Looking Forward
In May 2012, two earthquakes struck the region's central plain. Twenty-seven people died. Fourteen thousand were left temporarily homeless. Historic churches collapsed. Factories crumbled. The damage to the region's artistic heritage and manufacturing infrastructure ran into the billions of euros.
The region rebuilt. Factories reopened. Churches were restored. The earthquakes became another layer in the region's accumulated history, alongside Roman roads and Byzantine mosaics and Fascist violence and Communist governance.
Emilia-Romagna continues to evolve. Agricultural land is giving way to urban and industrial development—157 square kilometers of farmland lost between 2003 and 2008 alone. The number of farms is declining as small holdings consolidate into larger operations. The climate is changing, affecting the crops and the water cycles that have sustained the region for millennia.
Yet the fundamentals endure. The Via Emilia still carries traffic through the same cities the Romans founded. The university still teaches students who come from around the world. The kitchens still produce tortellini and ragù and Parmigiano-Reggiano. The factories still build cars that people dream about owning.
Lonely Planet wasn't wrong. This region, named for a Roman road and a vanished empire, remains one of Europe's most remarkable places to visit—and one of its best places to live.