Loiano stands on the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, along the Futa road, halfway between Bologna and Florence: a place where for centuries people stopped for the night. At the Corona inn, in 1508, the annexation of Cento to Ferrara was negotiated, and in 1786 Goethe spent the night there. The village also has the parish church of Santi Giacomo e Margherita, built in the seventeenth century and later reworked, and Palazzo Loup. The arms tell of two masters: today's red lion, in the old documents, was a griffin, and probably came from the arms of the Loiani, counts of Loiano, which were silver with a red griffin; the chief of Anjou, on the other hand, recalls that Bologna gave the orders here.
Those who come now, though, often come for the sky. On Monte Orzale is the Loiano station of the astronomical observatory of Bologna, inaugurated on 15 November 1936: its largest telescope is named after Giovanni Domenico Cassini, measures a hundred and fifty-two centimetres across and is the biggest in Italy after the one at Asiago; beside it there is a second, smaller one. At the locality of Val Sicura a shooting range founded in 1889 is still working. And in the pinewood, in recent years, mountain-bike trails have grown up that fill the village at weekends: Loiano is part, with Monghidoro, Monzuno and San Benedetto Val di Sambro, of the cycling district of the Bologna Montana. In July, then, comes the Festa d'la Batdura, the feast of the threshing.
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📅 Every year, on 25 July; the Festa d'la Batdura on the second-to-last weekend
Loiano celebrates Saint James on 25 July, in the church dedicated to him together with Saint Margaret.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Loiano, but an easy day trip away.
