Known as the ‘Fat’, the ‘Red’, and the ‘Learn’d’ due to its rich cuisine, crimson-hued buildings, and left-wing politics, Bologna is one of my favourite Italian cities. The porticoed arcades and the historic centre with the Basilica of San Petronio and Neptune’s fountain are truly beautiful.
When I started researching the events that took place there during the war, I needed to read several books in Italian to make sure the background to my story was accurate.
I soon discovered that Bologna was strategically important as an industrial and railway hub connecting northern and central Italy, made it a target for Allied air bombardments. And I also learnt that the city had been a hotbed of resistance against the Nazi-fascists. The more I researched, the more immersed I became in events. On a return visit to the city, I went to view the monument to the partisans in Neptune’s Square. The ceramic images placed behind glass of over two thousand young men and women who’d died for freedom, brought tears to my eyes.
All the novels in my Girls from the Italian Resistance series are set during two time periods. The Girl from Bologna takes place during the final years of the second world war, and also in the spring of 1981 when Leila, my World War Two heroine, rents out a room to Rhiannon, a young Welsh undergraduate. They form an immediate bond and I enjoyed bringing their connection to life on the page. Having been a student in Italy myself some years ago, I drew on many of my experiences learning Italian. I studied in Florence and Perugia, though, and never came across any neo-fascists.
There is a thriller element to the 1981 section of this novel. Alongside the monument to the partisans in Piazza del Nettuno you can find another monument, listing the names and ages of those killed by a terrorist bomb planted in the Bologna railway station on 2nd August 1980. The fact that the city had chosen, some forty years later, to honour the victims in the same location where so many partisans had given their lives, inspired me to construct the 1981 narrative around that heinous event.
