Life in Bologna

Foto di Marta Bocchi

Why Bologna?

Bologna is not just a place to study. It is a place to live.

There is something about this city that is difficult to define and impossible to forget, a quality that turns a study abroad into a formative chapter of a lifetime, and a degree programme into the experience of a lifetime.

Whether you choose to live in the heart of the university district, where every street corner hums with student life, or prefer the quieter rhythm of a residential neighbourhood just beyond the centre, Bologna meets you where you are. The city is compact enough to feel like home within days, yet layered enough to keep surprising you for years.

Getting around could not be easier. An international airport, a train station connecting every major Italian city, and an extensive bus network make Bologna one of the best-connected cities in the country and soon, a new tram line will add yet another thread to that fabric. For daily life, though, many students never need any of it: Bologna boasts one of the longest and best-maintained cycling lane networks in Italy, making the bicycle the natural companion of city life here.

Bologna is a city with an undeniable energy — a full calendar of cultural events, live music, food markets, art exhibitions, and international festivals — but one that never demands you keep up with it. You can dive in completely or find your own quieter corner of it. Bologna adapts to your pace, not the other way around. Green spaces and large urban parks offer room to breathe, to think, to slow down.

Then there is the food — and in Bologna, the food deserves a moment of its own. Known across Italy and well beyond as one of the country's greatest culinary capitals, Bologna wears its gastronomic identity with quiet pride. The local tradition runs deep, but at the same time, the city's long history of openness and cultural exchange is reflected just as much on its tables as in its lecture halls. Restaurants and markets representing cuisines from across the world sit comfortably alongside the local trattorias, making Bologna a place where culinary curiosity is always rewarded, whatever your taste or background.

And then there is the community. Bologna's student population — drawn from every region of Italy — has long had a reputation for being open, welcoming, and genuinely inclusive. Alongside it, an international student network that grows more vibrant with each passing year ensures that wherever you come from, you will find your people here.

Choosing Bologna means choosing a city that gives back as much as you put in — and usually, quite a bit more.

© Università di Bologna

Why the University of Bologna?

Choosing Bologna means joining a millennial legacy of excellence.

Founded in 1088, the Alma Mater Studiorum — University of Bologna is not simply one of the world's oldest universities: it is the oldest in the Western world, the very institution that invented the idea of the university as we know it. 

For nearly a thousand years, its halls have shaped the minds of extraordinary figures —  the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, to the poet Petrarch, the Nobel laureate Giosuè Carducci,  the inventor Guglielmo Marconi and Laura Bassi, the first woman in history to obtain a university professorship, a revolutionary milestone for her era. 

This is not a place that merely witnesses history, it creates it.

Today the University of Bologna stands as one of Italy's most dynamic research engines, consistently ranked first in the country across a remarkable variety of disciplines and among the global top institutions in the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject. 

With tens of thousands of students from across the world, a vast network of international exchange agreements and research output that resonates globally, the University of Bologna offers a truly global education within a deeply human environment. Academic reputation and research quality continue to grow year after year, further consolidating Alma Mater's position as a reference point among the great public universities of the world.

Here, life moves at your rhythm: you can cross the city centre by bicycle, enjoying a place that is both intimate and globally connected via its international airport and high-speed rail.

Nestled in the heart of the Motor Valley — home to giants like Ferrari and Ducati — and the world-leading Packaging District, Bologna offers unparalleled career links to global industry leaders. The university's ties with these industries are not incidental: they are built into the fabric of the institution, where cutting-edge research meets real-world application, and where your degree is shaped by the extraordinary ecosystem around you.

To study at Bologna is to be part of a tradition that spans a millennium — and a future that is still being written.

Why MIEX?

Into this city, and into this university, the MIEX Master fits with a sense of natural belonging. Born over twenty-five years ago with an ambitious vision — to bring genuine internationality to management education at one of Italy's most prestigious institutions — MIEX has grown steadily from that founding impulse into one of the most complete and competitive programmes in international management in the country. Within the Department of Economics, it has become an institution in its own right: one of the longest-running programmes of its kind, and one of the few that has not merely survived the test of time, but grown stronger through it.

That longevity is not a casualty. The MIEX faculty has been built with intention and care, welcoming new voices and fresh expertise year after year, while holding close the professors and professionals whose experience and continuity give the programme its backbone. The network of companies, practitioners, international speakers, and academic partners that has formed around MIEX over the decades is not a backdrop to the programme: it is part of its very substance, the living proof that what was built here was built to last.

And yet, perhaps the most telling mark of MIEX's strength is its willingness to change. A programme that endures does not do so by remaining fixed — it does so by listening the all around noises. The world moves faster, priorities shift, the needs of each new generation of students arrive with their own particular urgency. MIEX has met each of these moments not by abandoning what it stands for, but by finding new ways to honour it. The core mission remains unchanged; everything around it continues to evolve. That capacity — to adapt without losing itself — is, in the end, what makes MIEX not just a programme worth choosing, but one worth trusting.

Choosing MIEX means choosing a program, a chapter of your life and a city that give back as much as you put in — and usually, quite a bit more.