The wild and densely forested Bologna Apennines begin roughly at the southern walls of Bologna and extend all the way to the Tuscan border. Historically a place of exchange and transit, the area was hit particularly hard during World War II when the Nazis chose it as the site of the Gothic Line, a series of defenses intended to stop the Allied advance north.

The Bologna Apennines were where many of the most brutal battles took place, and though some villages were reduced to rubble and quickly rebuilt in a utilitarian style after the war, others survived mostly unscathed.