When I was still a child, I would meet groups of students dressed in their faculty colours milling around the centre of Bologna. They would be making a lot of noise about collecting some meagre offerings (almost always very little or nothing at all) for the freshmen’s party. Be it because of their colourful cloaks, their Sganappino hats*, their cheerfulness, or the confident pranks, coarse at ...

What would the city of Bologna have been without those first law schools that were to generate a new institution—the 12th century general Studium. And what would Bologna have become without its university?
These questions reveal how the city earned its identity as a centre of excellence for law studies (Irnerio, Pepo, Bulgaro, Accursio…) in its early years. “Docta suas secum duxit Bononia...

In 1985, the University of Bologna, of which I was the rector for 15 years between 1985 and 2000, restored the inauguration ceremony of the Academic Year, which had fallen into oblivion at the end of the 1960s, and at the same time, instigated the Honorary Degree. Among those honoured in 1987, I would especially like to recall the Degree given to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in the dark about ...