Normally I try to post daily to recap my travel adventures, but the past ~10 days have truly been among the busiest of my life. Among other things, we: finally held the destination wedding of our dreams in Florence (!!), held a 34-person rehearsal dinner (!), a 12-person birthday dinner to celebrate my husband(!)’s 30th (!) and have been enjoying an idyllic honeymoon in the Athens Riviera of Greece for the past week or so. Somewhere in there, I also found the time to do two more extensive day trips in the Emilia Romagna region, as well as help a friend propose once we arrived in Florence. So… back to business: a recap of all of the amazing villages I visited while we were based just outside of Bologna.

I originally envisioned this as two separate blog posts since each of these trips required extensive driving (Google tells me that all told, the route I took over the two days was ~7.5 hours of driving, ~350 miles all in). I decided to stay away from the larger towns in Emilia Romagna, and instead decided to really embrace some of Italy’s “most beautiful” villages or Citta d’Arte (definitions seem to vary on the exact designation, but most of these towns had a physical plaque designating them as a “City of Art” aka, a protected Italian heritage location) across the region. I started with a day trip to the east (same direction as Ravenna, San Marino and San Leo) and decided to visit Bagnacavallo, Brisighella, and Dozza.

First up was Bagnacavallo. It was actually located quite close to our hotel (Palazzo di Varignana), only about a ~35 minute drive to the east. Fortunately / unfortunately, these are truly small villages – there is no tourist draw (for most of them!) other than the fact that they are quaint, beautiful, and harken back to an earlier time in Italian history. As a result, the primary thing to do upon arrival was just… look around.

Bagnacavallo in particular is a sleepy, extremely small village characterized by a circular plaza that was built in the mid-1700s as a market / gathering place for locals. I managed to draw out my visit by attempting to find said plaza the long way (not intentionally, of course) – I left the primary visitor’s parking lot and walked and walked and walked the perimeter of the town, taking in the sights. The town has a gorgeous series of portico-covered walkways (much like Bologna!) with a central market and some lovely churches (none of which were open, but one had a hotel on site, so the proprietor kindly let me in to buy a bottle of water and use the bathroom before venturing onwards).

There was some neat street art as well. I also noticed an interesting quirk along the way – many of the doors had a curtain outside of the physical door to the property. I hadn’t seen this before in our travels of Italy, but upon Googling it looks like this is common and has a variety of explanations, from allowing ventilation (assuming the physical door is open), preventing flies from getting inside, or just for decor. Either way, it adds a lovely ambiance.

Finally, I decided to check the last area of town on Google Maps that appeared to have “culture”… and stumbled upon the main event: the Palazzo Nuovo, or the circular plaza that gives the town it’s “most beautiful” status. It was lovely, although relatively small.

Finally, I resigned myself to being hopelessly lost and needing to find my car in a parking lot somewhere on the perimeter of town… and literally popped out of this plaza no more than 10 parking spots away from where I’d parked. Classic.

Up next, I headed to Brisighella, the “most beautiful village” as asserted by at least 15 blogs, which I fully expected to be the highlight of the trip and had based this entire crazy itinerary around (of course, I could never JUST rent a car for one day to see something that looks cool, I had to create a 4-day roadtrip itinerary). Low key, it’s incredibly beautiful but… just underwhelming when compared to the entire series of towns I visited during my trip. Famed as being a beautiful medieval town with painted edifices, a hilltop clocktower and a stately castle, Brisighella did appear to have the most tourist infrastructure in place and likely could have supported an overnight stay had that been of interest. I showed up on a lazy feast day (of course!), so almost everything in town was closed (although I understand that the fortress and clock tower have extremely limited opening hours, so unless you spend over a week there, you may miss going inside).

The true highlight of Brisighella for me was the bakery I found on Via Alberto Baccarini near the main park, which sadly is too small to have an indexed named on Google Maps (from the photo below, I think it may be called “La Spoia Lorda”). The proprietor was incredibly kind and patient with my limited Italian, packing up a box of local treats (tagliatelle with powdered sugar?!) and throwing in a couple extra cookies for me.

After Brisighella, I somewhat begrudgingly decided to stop in the town of Dozza on my way back to the resort (it was only ~20 mins from the hotel and on the way anyway). At this point, I was tired, extremely sweaty, and feeling a bit foolish for getting “suckered” (voluntarily) into the marketing of these villages to begin with – not that they weren’t lovely, they just weren’t… exciting?

Dozza turned things around.

Picture the quaint charm of a small medieval village situated in incredibly beautiful countryside at sunset, and then slap a variety of intriguing murals of every color, style and texture across every facade. Yep. It was awesome.

Words don’t really do it justice, so I’ll just include an abundance of photos instead. Each and every building had murals, lining each of the medieval walkways up and down the main streets to the Rocca (aka the fortress overlooking the beautiful countryside). The entire town appeared to be at a huge BBQ behind the main church, so I had pretty much free reign to wander aimlessly.

The Rocca itself didn’t disappoint; unlike many of the castles, it actually had robusts exhibits with furniture, etc. and very thoughtful viewpoints.

The surroundings were especially gorgeous, as the entire view was gorgeous Emilia Romagna countryside.

Minus a couple dive-bombing swallows, it was an exceptional view. Overall, not the first day I expected seeing Italy’s “most beautiful” villages, but certainly not a bad start!

My second day, I was a little more ambitious with my roadtrip aspirations, heading far west in Emilia Romagna. As this is Italy’s “foodie” region, basically every exit on the highway was a town famous for an eponymous food (Modena, Parma, Reggio, etc.). The traffic was also amusing – lots of triple-decker trucks carrying beautiful pigs (almost certainly destined to become prosciutto or Parma hams) and many huge dairy trucks, carrying milk to be made into Parmesan or Grana Padano. I also wished I’d been able to safety take pics of the signs driving on the country roads – they were huge black and gold signs reading “Zona di Salami” with a huge picture of a salami, or “Zona di Grana Padano” with a picture of a cheese wheel. The highway signs also had highlights for each town – i.e., Piacenza is known for Grana Padano. Who knew I’d be getting a mini-food tour on the highway! Amusingly, I also drove by the Barilla factory.

I started out bright and early for Grazzano Visconti, a medieval village in the province of Piacenza. Although by far the most unexpectedly touristy of the towns I visited, it was absolutely beautiful. It had everything you’d expect to find in a quaint modern-day medieval town: old statues, a square surrounded by lovely homes-turn-tourist-shops, a clocktower, church bells ringing out the time, trellised flowers galore.

Once you leave the touristy center of town, the surrounding village is equally, if not more, beautiful. There is a town church, lovely walled villas similar to those I saw in the Romanian medieval villages, and lovely “gates” which now act as a de facto transition between the touristy center and the town.

Before heading to my next destination, I decided to stop for a snack at the one restaurant that appeared open – hilariously, it was blaring extremely loud dancehall music despite it being about 10am. I ordered the “aperitivo” menu, which I expected to be some kind of aperitif, what sounded like a croquette, and some local salami. Instead, it was water, a variety of packaged chips with clearly canned queso / dips on them, and some local salami. It was still unsurprisingly yummy, with extremely thinly sliced meat.

Then, I headed on my merry way towards my next stop: Castell’Arquato. Theoretically a castle on the side of the mountain, it promised spectacular views and a delightful Rocca from which to see the surrounding town. Unfortunately, the town was still recovering (quite literally, there were heavy equipment movers everywhere) from the last festival, so I wasn’t able to really enjoy most of the views from the tower or visit any of the museums.

However, it was still a worthwhile experience and beautiful to wander the winding streets after entering the impressive village walls.

Then, I set out for my next destination: the world’s largest bamboo maze, located bizarrely outside of Pisa. The winding hills on the drive away from Castell’Arquato had a couple views of the town from afar, but by the time I was able to safely pull over to take advantage, I was slightly too far away to truly capture the view. The five towers in the middle of the photo below are the old town I was wandering.

On the way, I stopped for lunch at what I believed was a restaurant attached to a local winery, but what ultimately ended up being a fabulous roadside-restaurant called Restaurante Primavera just outside of Castell’Arquato. It was about 2pm, but shockingly they were willing to stay open for me. It ultimately was a fantastic stop although we relied on pantomiming and Google translate to help us navigate the meal on both sides. I ordered the local salamis (way too much meat, but it was all delicious!) and then a house-recommended tortellini, which included sliced local meat as well. It was simple, but so perfectly made.

Then, I continued on my way back toward Parma to the bamboo maze. It was truly in the middle of nowhere – no local sites, and the pervasive smell of bovine presence everywhere. The maze itself was huge and much more daunting and impressive than I anticipated; I participated, along with a couple older couples and about 50 school kids. I did get lost – the maze didn’t include any statues, signs, etc. that you’d normally expect, so there were truly no visual markers of progress – and suddenly understood how the maze could be such a challenge of mental wits in the 4th Harry Potter book.

Then, I continued to my last stop of the day: Fontanellato. Another picturesque village known for its Rocca (this one with a working moat!) and colorful facades, it was my second favorite of the day behind Grazzano Visconti.

Again, there isn’t much to DO in the medieval, picture-perfect section of the town (although I will say, it is surrounded by a much larger, metropolitan city that did appear to have quite a bit happening, unlike the other two which were truly isolated). That being said, the Rocca is lovely, and the little square surrounding was perfect for an afternoon espresso pick-me-up.

After that, I started my nearly two-hour trek back to the outskirts of Bologna, taking in a couple additional sights (I’m not above pulling over to see a gorgeous roadside cathedral in the middle of nowhere!). The gorgeous cathedral below is from Podenzano, the home of the famed Fiocchi salami (and not much else, it was an incredibly tiny town).

I would be remiss to not mention the incredible food we also experienced in the small town of Varignana, located in the relatively small “commune” of Castel San Pietro Terme, located a short walk from our resort. The town’s hotel restaurant, Terantiga, has an incredible “all you can eat” (and they aren’t kidding) restaurant with unlimited pastas, each of which highlights some of the local food traditions. It was fabulous. We tried the ragu Bolognese, the garganelli with speck, the strozzapreti al pasticcio, and the tiramisu, which was incredible (basically all the cream, no real pastry).

I also wanted to record a couple additional memories that formed over the course of this bizarrely intense road trip:

• Throughout my time driving the Emilia Romagna highways (and small winding roads!) I saw an RV-style camper reading “Kentucky Camp” which made me laugh (how can one glamorize Kentucky!?) and a series of heavy carrier trucks that had a big American flag on the back – who knows what that meant, but it was really amusing to be in the middle of nowhere and see a giant Old Glory emblazoned on a truck
• The phone ringer in the small roadside restaurant was a jazzy instrumental of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” which cracked me up the several times it rang
• The first day, I decided to take the car to a car wash since it had been flooding across the region and we’d gotten a bit muddy on the way back from Ravenna. I pulled up, and it turned out the automatic car wash included them starting the automatic carwash, letting it run while washing the vehicle by hand, and then putting the car through the automatic dryers (and then drying by hand as well). I was fully expecting to be hit with a massive bill at the end for all the effort but it was just 6 Euro.

Overall, truly a memorable and beautiful trip through the countryside. I’ve convinced my husband (!) that as much as we love Emilia Romagna, we need to see other parts of Italy when we visit next.