Observing and telling

In designing mathematical tourism itineraries, we believe it is essential to consider at least two distinct points of view: that of Observing and that of Telling. Learning to "observe" mathematics means training the eye to recognize a plethora of recurring themes, which everyone can use to look at any city with different eyes (arches, bridges, domes, etc.). If we only adopted this point of view, however, the routes would risk being placed in the city context in a somewhat specious manner and therefore could not be very engaging.

For this reason we intend to intertwine the aspect of observation with the "telling" of the stories of the characters and mathematical objects that underlie each building/monument/work of art: Bologna offers many stories related to mathematics, starting from the events involving famous mathematicians who visited the city.