Piazza Aldrovandi

More a wide street than a square, Aldrovandi is often overlooked when it comes to food shopping because it lacks the sheer quantity of top grade specialist shops in the quadrilateral off Piazza Maggiore. But it has its own charms.

The main attraction is the endless parade of fruit and vegetable and cheese stalls, many of them run by south east Asians who know the value of a bargain. Some stalls offer a 1 euro bowl of anything, splendid value when the produce is dazzlingly fresh, as it invariably is in Bologna. There are bars and clothes shops, and at the junction with via San Vitale, a new arrival, Olivo, a new wave restaurant with tables on the street as well as indoors in a jumble of interconnecting rooms.