It's not easy to compete with Florence and the Vatican, but with the overhaul of one gritty neighborhood, Bologna is stepping out of the shadows.
Thanks in part to its location near the Reno River, Bologna has long been a manufacturing hub. But these days, the city is making an effort to manufacture something of a more creative nature: modern art and design.
Bologna was named a European Capital of Culture in 2000; as a result, it raised $10 million to transform a blighted neighborhood in the northwest -- a 15-minute walk from the city center -- into an arts hub. Up to that point, a former slaughterhouse, salt warehouse and tobacco warehouse were deserted. Now, a million-square-foot area is being refashioned into a complex called Manifattura delle Arti, or Factory of the Arts.
The former slaughterhouse was gutted in 2003, then turned into the Cineteca, a center for film research and restoration. It houses the Charlie Chaplin film archives; Chaplin fans can borrow DVDs of his movies from the airy, light-filled library and watch them at screening stations that are available to the public free of charge. In a connected building are two art-house theaters named after the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, who held the first public movie screening in Paris in 1895. "When we opened, they ran a film about the area," says Cecilia Cenciarelli, coordinator of the archives. "They interviewed this old man who talked about seeing a pig get slaughtered. It was incredibly funny."
Across the way, the salt warehouse was converted into a new home for Cassero, the city's gay and lesbian center. There's a disco and a backyard garden, where raucous parties take place on hot summer nights. "They're so much fun, and everyone goes," Cenciarelli says.
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