Over 6 million donations in four years, from 2022 to 2025. A treasure made up of paintings, books, works of art, apartments, inheritances worth thousands of euros left to the municipal shelter, or “to the poor”. Pieces of life that many Bolognese wanted to leave to all of us, to the community.
To be precise, the “gifts” that the people of Bologna have given to the Municipality since the beginning of their mandate are worth 6 million 143,841 euros, including art bonuses and inheritances, including the works of art now exhibited at the Mambo or at the Archaeological Museum.
In there is the set of donations – in the form of art bonuses – for the restoration of the Two Towers, which starts from a collection of 743 thousand euros in 2023 and reaches 2.6 million in 2024, to fall back to 110 thousand euros last year: a total of 3.5 million. To which must be added another million, donated by the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Foundation. But there are also donations in favor of the Remonda source, which from 810 euros in 2022 reached 20 thousand euros in 2023 and 18 thousand in 2024. While the donations “in favor of cultural heritage” totaled 271 thousand euros.
In the museums, works worth over 194 thousand euros were found in 2025 alone. Like the gigantic “Nucleo” by Davide Bertocchi, donated by the artist to Mambo last year. And again in 2025, the donation of another work was also completed, this time by Italo Zuffi, which is entitled “Gli Ignari”. A series of ceramic bean pods accompanied by the sound of whistles (and in fact the donation also includes an Mp3 player with the audio track and two speakers).
Four marble tables based on a design by Mario Cucinella, created for the Do ut do exhibition, have arrived at the Archeologico. And also a brass medal made by Marco Marchesini for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Guglielmo Marconi, donated by the Lions Club. And also a book collection of around 2 thousand volumes, which belonged to the library of Professor Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri, an internationally renowned archaeologist, scholar of Italian and Mediterranean protohistory, who passed away at the age of 80 in 2023.
Under inheritance and monetary donations we instead find 5,553 euros in 2022, rising to 783 thousand in 2023, then another 11,676 euros in 2024 and 325,413 euros in 2025 for a total of over 1 million 100 thousand euros. Numbers that hide stories like that of Luciana Buggetti, a Bolognese who died last February and who decided to bequeath her assets to the Ant and to the municipal kennel, the Dog and Cat Refuge in Trebbo di Reno, to which 120 thousand euros went.
While another 84 thousand euros were donated to social services by Mrs. Iole Brini, who passed away in 2023, who in her will, the council document reports, had foreseen “if we have anything left to give everything to the poor”.
