New York, Paris and Tokyo may be on your travel bucket list, but there are plenty of cities that don’t get enough credit and are well worth a visit. Underrated cities have their benefits — they can often be less crowded, more affordable, and just as interesting.
As a travel journalist for over 20 years, and I recently asked 175 travel enthusiasts, experts and agents about what they think is the most underrated city to visit. The most popular answer by far was surprising: Bologna, Italy.
“Bologna is very up-and-coming and poised to be the new hot Italian city to visit,” says Tom Marchant, founder of luxury traveling company Black Tomato. “And as the home of Bolognese pasta, it’s a foodie mecca.”
Bologna: The new ‘hot’ city to visit
Bologna’s many nicknames — La Rossa (the “Red,” for its red-tiled roofs), La Dotta (the “Learned,” for the ancient University of Bologna), and most famously, La Grassa (the “Fat,” for its rich cuisine) — explain the best parts of the city.
Here are the top three reasons to put Bologna on your travel list this year:
1. The food scene is unparalleled.
“[Bologna] quite possibly has the best food scene in all of Italy,” says Jeff Miller, a travel blogger at Our Passion for Travel.
Food lovers can explore the city’s open-air markets and hidden pastifici (pasta shops) and visit the restaurants that created favorites like pasta Bolognese and Tortellini.
You can also spend a day at FICO Eataly World (a.k.a. the “Disney World of food”), Bologna’s 20-acre theme park entirely dedicated to Italian cuisine.
Or, take a day trip to the Emilia-Romagna region, where Italian gastronomy was born.
“Bologna has great access to Modena and Parma, both with famous products [like Modena prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano] named after them,” says David Hawkraven, owner of Designed Travel.
Hawkraven often sends travelers to local farms, where they can taste Modena prosciutto — which is rarely found in the U.S. — or learn…
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