My favourite place: Bologna, Italy

A: I was there in late January. My interest in food makes Bologna a must-visit destination as one of the great places to touch base with the fundamentals of Italian cookery. When not eating or food shopping there's a wealth of artistic and historical interest!

Q: Why do you love the location?

A: It has an authenticity that some of the tourist honey pots are losing and a great deal of variety in a relatively compact city centre. Bologna is also celebrated as one of the world's jazz capitals and there are great street musicians their.

Q: Which historical sight would you recommend and why?

A: The Archiginnasio is the beautiful central building of Bologna University, the world's oldest.

The Church of Santo Stefano is a remarkable complex of early medieval places of worship on the edge of a wonderful square.

I’d also recommend the university's museums in the Palazzo Poggi for their weird, fascinating and inspiring testimony to Bologna's intellectual prowess.

Q: Where else in the world would you most like to visit and why?

A: Gosh... Paradoxically the more I travel the more places I want to visit. Some are relatively close to home: Dresden, Reykjavik, Bergamo, Strasbourg, and others are a little more far flung – Cochin, Seoul, Ecuador, Antarctica.

Loyd Grossman is a television presenter, art historian and food lover.

You can read more about his experiences in Bologna in the July 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine.