Study in Bologna

Bologna is home to the University of Bologna — founded in 1088, and generally regarded as the oldest university in the world still operating today. It's a genuinely studenty city: porticoed streets built for exactly this kind of foot traffic, a dense concentration of students relative to its size, and a food culture that's a serious draw in its own right.

As with Rome, our deepest, most detailed on-the-ground support currently stays in Turin and Milan — we don't have the same neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood rent data or a vetted-rooms network here yet, and we'd rather say so plainly than pad this page with figures we haven't checked.

You still get the full guided application process — course choice, Universitaly pre-enrolment, visa and legalisation support, and a settling-in checklist for the city — plus general guidance on what to expect from the local rental market once you're actually looking. Bologna Centrale is one of Italy's best-connected stations, on the high-speed line between Milan and Florence/Rome, which makes the city an easy one to reach and to travel from.

Bologna's compact size compared to Rome or Milan is genuinely an advantage for a new arrival: most of the university's faculties, student housing, and daily life cluster within a walkable or short-bike-ride radius of the historic centre, so settling in tends to feel more immediate here than in a sprawling capital. It's a reasonable choice for a student who wants a strong, historic university without the scale and pace of Italy's largest cities.