Though a relatively flat and very walk-able city, Bologna's south gate begins a climb up a steep mountain, part of the Alps called Monte della Guardia which gets its name from olden times when the Bolognese guards would be stationed here to keep an eye on Modena. ⁣

A Byzantine hermit showed up in Italy one day in the 1100's confused and bewildered looking for a mountain top he only saw in a vision, with him he had an icon of the Madonna with child that he was meant to deliver to the mountain top. 

These kinds of legends never sit well with me because they seem so unbelievable but anyway he was eventually convinced that Monte della Guardia was the hilltop he was looking for and at its top a shrine was established to house the icon he had brought all the way from Byzantium. Over the next couple of hundred years this shrine developed into a monumentally impressive baroque-style basilica designed by Carlo Francesco Dotti, one that dominates the skyline and that you can see from most vantage points in the city below. 

Once a year the icon, which is elaborately covered in silver and jewels so that only the dark smudged faces of the actual icon appear in its center, is carried down the mountain and installed in the Cathedral of San Pietro in the city center and then brought back up again. The Bolognesi being Bolognesi built a stretch of porticoes (arched colonnades) two miles long from the base of the mountain to the top so the icon wouldn’t get wet on its journey. Called the Portico of San Luca, you can walk steeply up or down this covered portico in all weathers, but there is also a cheap tramcar cutely modeled to look like a toy train that takes you up the mountain to the top and when you are ready it will take you down again.  

The Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca its much bigger than it looks, the dome capped in turquoise, set in the tranquility of the mountains. It’s really perfect. ⁣

The only other thing on the mountaintop near the Sanctuary is an isolated and very cozy little restaurant called Vito San Luca. It's the logical place to wait for the tramcar to return you back down the mountain. The inside has a great fireplace that was filled with crackling wood on the cold late-November day I was there. I had a modest plate of sliced mortadella as a snack but their menu looked great, including tortellini in capon broth, baked lasagne, and the typical Emilian dessert of Zuppa Inglese (the Italian's attempt to make an English Trifle, translated as "English Soup" and stained with the inky bright red Italian liqueur called Alchermes. Zuppa Inglese is the precursor of more worldwide famous Tiramisu)