100 years of excellence

17-10-2017 | Style & Culture

Written by: Giancarlo Roversi

“Grand Hotel Majestic ‘già Baglioni’ – Bologna. Cent’anni di eccellenze” (Grand Hotel Majestic ‘già Baglioni’ – Bologna. One hundred years of excellence) is a volume which recounts the history, character and cultural legacy of the only luxury five-star hotel in Emilia-Romagna.

Edited by Giancarlo Roversi, the book contains contributions from authoritative academics and names from Italian culture — Beatrice Buscaroli, Mario Fanti, Paola Foschi, Rosaria Greco Grassilli, Guido Lenzi, Carlo Monzani, Stefano Quarenghi, Daniela Sinigalliesi — who reconstruct the role of the Grand Hotel Majestic “già Baglioni” as a symbolic location of the city from different points of view.

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I have always seen in the Grand Hotel Majestic «già Baglioni» one of the most immediate symbols of Bologna without any awe of the most vaunted ones, first and foremost the Two Towers. And this is because the old «Baglioni» does not constitute a crystallized expression of the city, but one of its most vivid incarnations and reflects its most candid soul, its vocation for hospitality, the art de vivre, its taste for beauty and the quality of life.

Knight of Labour, Mario Bandiera

100 anni di eccellenza | 100 years of excellence

But that's not enough, because the legendary Baglioni has represented and still represents Bologna's calling card for thousands of Italians and foreigners passing through the capital of Emilia Romagna, where he leaves an unforgettable memory of the lifestyle, civic spirit, social commitment, and unwavering cultural tradition of a city that boasts of being home to the oldest of all the world's universities.

Values that are ideally summarized within the walls of the Grand Hotel Majestic «già Baglioni», whose events this book retraces on the centenary of its foundation. Events that blend with those of Bologna's history and that the hotel can still tell today after having escaped war raids in the 1940s. And, above all, after having escaped, at the end of the 1970s, the danger of definitively exiting the scene if the planned conversion of the ancient building to residential and commercial uses occurred with a drastic division of the internal spaces.

While since the early 1980s we have stubbornly believed in its rebirth through long and patient restoration and restoration of the furnishings, we are now fully satisfied to note that this monument of Bolognese hospitality has regained its rightful place not only in the city's hotel scene, but also nationally and internationally.

With this reason of sincere pride I wish the glorious «Baglioni» another hundred years on the crest of the wave.