San Lazzaro di Savena

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Comune di San Lazzaro di Savena
Coat of arms of Comune di San Lazzaro di Savena
Municipal coat of arms
Country Flag of Italy Italy
Region Emilia-Romagna
Province Bologna (BO)
Mayor Marco Macciantelli (since June, 2004
Elevation 62 m
Area 44 km²
Population
 - Total (as of 2006) 30,200
 - Density 686/km²
Time zone CET, UTC+1
Coordinates 44°28′15″ N 11°24′30″ E
Gentilic
Dialing code 051
Postal code 40068
Frazioni Borgatella, Castel de Britti, Cicogna, Colunga, Croara, Idice, Ponticella
Patron St. Lazarus
 - Day December 17
Website: www.comune.sanlazzaro.bo.it

San Lazzaro di Savena is an Italian comune (municipality) of some 30,000 inhabitants in the province of Bologna, Emilia-Romagna.

Contents

[edit] Location

The town is located on the Via Emilia, a major thoroughfare for town traffic, 6 km from the city centre of Bologna towards the southeast.

The territory of the municipality extends towards the plain and at the foot of the first hills around Bologna. Some watercourses such as the Zena (creek), the Idice and the Savena, after which the town was named, flow through the town.

Within the territory of the municipality we can find the Spipola Cave with its doline and the chalky rock emergences of the Farneto and the Croara, that give shape to an extremely interesting karst compound (there are about 50 caves and natural hollows crossed by a 6 km long hypogeous stream), protected by the Parco dei Gessi Bolognesi e Calanchi dell'Abbadessa (Natural park of Bologna's chalky rocks and the Abbess's gully).

[edit] History

Inhabited since ancient times, within the territory of the municipality many findings from the Stone Age (stone instruments) and the Bronze Age have been found and, along with nearby Castenaso it witnessed a flourishing Villanovian civilization.

An existing document shows that ever since 1214 a quarantine station (in Italian lazzaretto, from which the other part of the name originated) was located, as usual, outside the town so that ill people could be isolated and the propagation of a disease could be limited.

The town was autonomous municipality in the Napoleonic Era (1810). It was afterwards readmitted to Bologna and gained back autonomy with the help of Carlo Berti Pichat after 1827.

Nowadays, after the building expansion of the 1970s, San Lazzaro is one of the most populated towns in the province of Bologna and is the main seat of a good number of factories.

[edit] Main sights

In San Lazzaro the museum of prehistory "Luigi Donini" gathering many remarkable findings of ancient times has been recently opened.

[edit] External links