Traveller’s tragedy: How My Beloved Italian City Has Turned Into Tourist Hell

Ilaria Maria Sala

A little more than 10 years ago, Bologna, my Italian hometown, was not really considered a big tourist destination. Group tours would come, but the city was primarily known for being the place with one of the oldest universities in Europe. Its cuisine dishes like tortellini and tagliatelle was an attraction, too, but in a subdued way.

Budget airlines, short-term rentals and social media changed everything. These days Bologna is on its way to becoming a full-blown, must-avoid-the-main-roads kind of tourist city. Some of the effects of this have been typical, like the landlords who have converted apartments to short-term rentals, which has raised rents and sent students farther from the university and into the smaller towns on the periphery. But one result has been very particular to Bologna: the consumption of mind-numbing, heart-stopping amounts of mortadella.

If you are not already familiar with it, mortadella is a cold cut made of finely ground, light-pink pork dotted with white cubes of fat and, occasionally, pistachios. It and Bologna go way back. The slow eating of our city by mortadella shops started before Covid but accelerated when, as in many cities, lots of Bologna’s independent shops, cafes and restaurants went out of business during the pandemic. Many of those in the centre of town were bought up by chains with deep pockets and a singular vision: to sell mortadella to foreigners.

Downtown has changed completely. In the streets around the historic main square there used to be many old stationery shops a favourite sold fountain pens, inks in every colour and all the hand-bound notebooks one could dream of. It had been there for as long as I can remember, but was recently turned into an “Ancient cold cuts butcher.” It’s part of a chain. Just across from it, in what I think used to be a jewellery store, is a second self-styled ancient butcher from the same chain. When I asked the shop assistant how ancient they were, she replied that they had been open for three months.

Also just off the main square is a little maze of streets where the ancient food market used to be. Many shops are still there, looking picture perfect and trying to sell their fruit and vegetables, though presumably not to the throngs of people marching behind leaders with microphones and little flags held aloft. Those groups usually stop in front of the old shops that have given in and now exhibit rounds upon rounds of mortadella in the windows.

There are also endless representations of pigs. In front of one shop I saw statues of happy pigs holding the knives with which they’ll presumably butcher themselves into mortadella. Pig snouts on the logo of another. Naturalistic, stylised and smiling pigs gaze benignly on the waiters below, who cart trays piled high with fluffy pork arranged like clouds and ribbons.

Other newly minted traditions have popped up. A new shop, also close to the main square, sells fried tortellini in a paper cone, saying it is a local specialty (more aspirationally than accurately). I see tourists walking around holding paper cones that are slowly dissolving in the grease, transferring little fried tortellini into their mouths with a single-use fork. They seem to enjoy them frying after all makes everything taste nicer but I do wonder whether they think they are having a very local experience.