The Fiera di Bologna is the exhibition center of the city and of the metropolitan area of ??Bologna, located in the San Donato district in the northern part of the city and close to the ring road.
The first important fair hosted in Bologna was the "Great Emilian Exhibition" in 1888, hosted in the Margherita Gardens and inaugurated by Umberto I with his wife Margherita of Savoy and by the Prime Minister Francesco Crispi. In 1901, the first Bologna exhibition was held in the premises of the EDEN Kursal (the current headquarters of I Portici Hotel in Via Indipendenza).
In the fifties they began to think about the construction of a real site for the Fair; a competition was launched in this regard, won by the architects Leonardo Benevolo, Tommaso Giura Longo and Carlo Melograni.
The works began in 1964 with the laying of the first stone; in 1965 the first block hosted, for the first time in a fixed location, the 29th Bologna Trade Fair.
Pavilions 21, 22, 25, 26, 31, 32 are part of this historic core. A subsequent important addition to the Bologna exhibition center was made in 1972 by the well-known Japanese architect KenzÅ Tange, who was also responsible for the complex of skyscrapers (the Fiera District, home to important offices including the Region and of which the last, completed in 2011, is the highest of the group with its 80 meters) for a total of 20,000 m².
In the 2000s Pierluigi Cerri signed the project for new pavilions a new pavilion (16-18, inaugurated in 2004, 14-15, inaugurated in 2008), adding a further 60 thousand square meters of covered spaces. 29 and 30, rebuilt from scratch in place of the previous ones. These are the first of a series of changes and additions foreseen in the expansion project signed by Di Gregorio Associati.
In 2002, the Autonomous Body of the Bologna Fair was definitively privatized and transformed into a Spa, Bolognafiere Spa, which is the hub of a regional exhibition system consisting of three exhibition centers: Bologna, Modena and Ferrara for a total of approximately 200,000 m² in the radius of 30 kilometers.
Bologna Fair
Address: Viale della Fiera, 20, 40127
Phone: 051 282111
Site:
http://www.bolognafiere.it/Location inserted by
Pierpaolo Dori