Santuario della Madonna di San Luca

Bologna’s religious patron saint (Petronio is the ‘civic patron’) is this icon of the Madonna attributed to St Luke, which according to local legend once hung in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. A pious Greek named Theocles had a vision there, in which the Virgin commanded him to remove the icon to the ‘sentinel mountain’. He wandered for years with it, before coming to Rome, where he was taken in by a kindly Bolognese senator who told him about the Colle della Guardia back home.

Nobody knows for sure when the icon turned up (it has been dated to the 12th century), though this sanctuary seems to have begun as a pilgrim hostel, perhaps in the 11th century, before becoming a pilgrimage destination in its own right. Every year, just before Ascension Day in May, the icon descends in procession through the portico to spend a week in the cathedral of San Pietro.