Dozza (in the province of Imola in the Emilia-Romagna region)

I don't do "trip reports," but I wanted to mention this one town because I don't think too many people go there. The following is cut and pasted from a message I addressed to someone on the Day trips from Bologna thread:

I particularly loved Dozza. It was such a surprising, improbable combination of a traditional looking medieval town and a unique offbeat art site. I was just amazed by it. Every two years artists paint murals on the houses and streets and other walls of the town. The works vary tremendously in style, but somehow the overall effect, though startling, is interesting rather than tacky. I think this started out as an oddball local project (I have some information, but didn't read it yet), but now there is a biennial festival in which artists from all over the world come to paint out in the open, with the public watching. There were murals painted by artists from Japan, Poland, France, for example, not just Italians.

I went with a friend, an Italian originally from Milan, who lives in Bologna. He'd never even been to Dozza until this summer and he was so excited when he saw it that he e-mailed me the photo and told me that whenever I visited, we'd have to go there.

We went in the morning. I was completely charmed by it. There seemed to be no other foreign visitors besides me and a group of Japanese who seemed equally fascinated and were doing justice to the scenes with excellent photographic equipment. I went to the castle, but didn't buy any wine, because this was pretty early in my trip and it's a huge pain to carry.

There was some sagra going on--grape harvest or something like that--and, just as you described, there was to be a big communal supper in the square that night at a very cheap price. So after our trip to Ravenna, where I enjoyed revisiting the mosaics I'd seen 31 years ago and my friend saw them for the first time, we returned to Dozza for supper. It was good food, better than many of the overpriced meals I found elsewhere in Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy, and cheap. It was also a happy, friendly, but not rowdy group of people--a completely satisfying experience.

I learned Italian in college many moons ago from someone who grew up near there, on a farm in Imola. It was interesting to see her home territiry and I sent her a postcard from Dozza. (I'd just spoken to her a week before I left and neglected to mention I was leaving for Italy, so it will probably seem a bit strange.)



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