Bologna – There is no escape with Professor Giovanni Brizzi. He does not escape everything that he first studied and then taught throughout his life: Roman history. Born in Bologna, for fifty-two years without interruption he immersed himself in ancient history, first, from 1965, as a student at the Alma Mater, then as a professor there and at other universities. Today, who is retired, he continues to deal with it as emeritus and is in bookstores with “Imperium. Power in Rome” (Laterza).
Professor, what would you recommend visiting to find Roman remains?
«Emilia-Romagna is a region of which I love every aspect, and above all, how much of the ancient remains there. Trusted more often than marble, which is almost absent, to a locally very rich brick production, the emerging testimonies of the Roman age that seem unavoidable to me are Sarsina, sanguine and suggestive for the grandiose dimensions of its sepulchral monuments and for the remains of the first Italic sanctuary of oriental cults. Then Rimini, with its ambitions as an ancient capital and the surviving marble wonders, the bridge and the arch. Ravenna solemn and elegant. Finally, Veleia (Piacenza), a neat and dignified Apennine survivor.”
Then there is the Via Emilia, the Roman road par excellence.
«I was about to get there. In particular, I love the sigillum that identifies this land, that is, the Via Emilia which, the basis of the most ancient border of Roman Italy, marked it and gave it its name shortly after the first rise of the Regiones Augustee. Above all, in the blood and moods of Emilia-Romagna, of the north-western part and perhaps above all of that of Romagna to the south-west, I tried and I believed I found, by loving them, the traces of that capacity for integration of the other which constitutes the most important component of Roman culture”.
You were born and raised in Bologna. Galvani, the university, the students… «From Sassari, Udine, Paris, the university where I served over time, I always returned to my center of attraction, Bologna where I grew up in the streets that still today retain the names of via dei Maceri and via degli Orti and the very personal and forbidden jungle of us children: the immense nursery of Ansaloni then included between the roadbed of the Bologna-Florence railway line and the current Viale Lenin, extending with rare and for me very daring exploratory trips up to S. Ruffillo, to bathe in the Savena, or in San Lazzaro, as well as the war cemeteries, the true borders of the world for us children.”
What are your favorite places in the city?
«Here, Piazza Santo Stefano and the towers, San Domenico and the portico dei Servi, the Archaeological, the Medieval, the Art Gallery have always seduced me. But, I confess, my inescapable place of choice, the one I attended for a large part of my time, the University, the Alma Mater is what I loved and love most.”
And the Adriatic?
«These are the first summers at the seaside, all strictly on the beloved Romagna Riviera. Bellaria, Miramare, Rivazzurra, Cesenatico but the favorite place is Riccione, even in winter.”
