The study rooms, recreation rooms and student housing of the Collegio are in the Irnerio Residence College.
The current building of the Irnerio Residence is located in the heart of the University City and originally housed the University College Irnerio. It was built by architect Luigi Riguzzi in 1953, after the start of the engineer Giuseppe Rinaldi. The building was constructed occupying almost entirely the pre-existing Piazza Vittorio Puntoni and was inaugurated on November 25, 1954 in the presence of the Rector Felice Battaglia, the Minister of Education Giuseppe Ermini and Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro. This historical information was retrieved from the Historical Archives of the University of Bologna with the collaboration of Prof. Roberto Balzani.
"... The University College Irnerio, built on the order of Rector Prof. Felice Battaglia, was built by the Civil Engineering Office of Bologna, at the corner of Via Zamboni and Via San Giacomo and therefore in the heart of the University City. Its particular location and the limited area available were the determining constraints in imposing the urban planning and distribution values that influenced the entire project. Externally, the need to continue an architectural dialogue with the buildings of the old Via Zamboni led to traditional forms, with quiet rhythms, static, but warmed by the facade in Bolognese terracotta. Inside, the operational requirements (meaning the sense of life to be lived completely in the environment) and togetherness, the need for study, rest, individual and collective leisure, found correspondence in the planimetric distribution of the various elements that were designed with decidedly modern concepts. ... The College can accommodate 93 students in as many single rooms; it is equipped with a kitchen, a gymnasium, a cafeteria-dining hall, a hall, rooms for management and a meeting room, as well as four common rooms - one on each floor - in addition to all the rooms inherent to community services. On the fifth floor there is a panoramic terrace from which you can enjoy a magnificent view of the university building complex and the entire arc of the hills south of the city; the two wings of the building enclose a courtyard garden, with green areas, very quiet and peaceful, almost a "hortus conclusus". The basic constitutive element of the Collegio, that is the rooms for students, was designed with particular care and created with the best modern building resources for each specific function. Insulating and soundproofing materials, various measures for the graduation of light from the windows, soundproofed and elastic floors, an appropriate electric lighting system, have been amply distributed and above all merged with the actual furnishings in order to succeed in creating a typical environment as suitable as possible to encourage students’ concentration ... Its official inauguration, which took place very recently, in the presence of the most important Italian authorities and personalities, the influx of visitors from every country in the world and its already intense activity, with more and more frequent learned conferences, consecrate the valuable function of the Irnerio College, not only for collegiates, but also as a meeting point for more intimate and fruitful international relations.
[Riguzzi, Luigi, Il convitto Irnerio, S.l., s.n., [1955?] (Bologna : Delaiti), [4] p.]