Did a whistle stop two day trip to Bologna and back yesterday and Tuesday to visit the factory and museum. During a British Airways sale earlier in year got return flights and one night in a central Bologna hotel (inc breakfast) for £209. Other costs were hire car, you could use taxis everywhere (but the car from Hertz was so cheap it probably worked out less than taxis), food and drink and parking at Heathrow. With some costs shared total cost to me was probably between £300 and £350. Not cheap but not outrageous either. I'd thoroughly recommend it. The Ducati host/tour guide was great fun and very friendly. You don't see a massive amount of the factory but they do effectively walk you through the process of putting a bike together from building the engine at the beginning to rolling road test and initial prepping for delivery transport at the end. Saw examples of pretty much every bike in the range in various stages of build, including the Superleggera. Time wise it was about an hour. The museum is also really great. A walk through of Ducati history from their first radios to pretty much the latest MotoGP bikes and lots in between. After a guided tour of the museum, about 30 minutes or so, you are then free to wander about to take it all in, take photographs and stay as long as you want. Or until it closes for the day anyway. There's also a small shop attached to the museum for souvenirs. It pays not to spend too much there though as the much, much larger factory store is just a short walk away and carries, from what I could see, pretty much everything you can buy from the online Ducati store, including the complete range of riding gear. A fair amount of stuff was on special offer, if you wanted Ducati branding on your leathers you could probably save the cost of the trip on what they're selling on their outlet racks. Whilst we were waiting at the gate for entry a group of Italians on bikes arrived to visit, it was amusing to watch the two or three non-Ducati riders being turned away to park elsewhere whilst all the Ducati riders were allowed in to park at the front of the factory. It does say that will happen in the instructions you get... There's also free car parking adjacent to the factory. Central Bologna itself is a nice scenic, historic place, good food and beer to be had. The periphery perhaps less so and the site of hookers working from the edges of the dual carriageway on the road out to the factory was unexpected! No photographs allowed during the factory tour, but you can take as many as you want outside and in the museum. Have attached a few that I took on the phone and posted to Instagram. If anyone was thinking of doing it themselves, if you think I can answer any questions you might have please ask.
Thank you for your nice little write up, Masklin, and for posting a few pictures. I've been to the museum a couple of times, but not managed a factory tour yet. Questions about visiting the Ducati factory and museum pop up on the forum from time to time, so I'm sure you will have a few questions in due course.
There's definitely a Raymond Roche 851 and a Doug Polen 888 in the museum. Have got pictures that include them in the camera but haven't had time to download them to the computer yet. When I do, probably not till middle next week, I'll add them to the thread.
Sounds great How did you organise the tour - ie who is best to contact please? My 14 yr old has been on at me about this for ages and does look brilliant
Do you need to book both or can you just turn up for the museum? I'm off to northern Italy at the beginning of June and I'm sure I can persuade SWMBO to visit Bologna )
The link for booking the factory tour is on the right of the page here... Ducati location and directions information to visit us There's a web form to fill in with requested dates. My experience was that they got back to me to confirm first choice was okay quite promptly. El Toro I think you can visit the museum without doing the tour, but I'm not 100% sure. If you email them at [email protected] and ask they'll probably get back to you pretty quickly if it's during the working week. I had a couple of questions that they responded to promptly during said working week. If you're into cars as well Ferrari (museum, factory and track tour available) and Lamborghini (factory tour and museum available) aren't too far away from Bologna either. Despite what it sort of suggests on the info they send you, they will store luggage at the museum reception (albeit not in any secure way, but I don't imagine anything remiss happening) and there are toilets!
I visited the factory several years ago and loved it.....but you must must must book it first.dont ask me how I know. and if you don't book it first I can recommend the Ferrari museum,i really loved the older vehicles and to be honest could have taken or left the modern stuff. check first if booking flights as I think the factory closes for funny holidays ( not funny though if you turn up and closed ). this would make a petrol heads Carlsberg mini break.
Booked a tour for 6 of us and are looking forward to this when we visit in June at the end of our 3500 mile tour through Europe.
If you visit the Ferrari Museo at Maranello without having pre-booked a ticket, you'll have to join a queue - which might be long on busy days.
You need to book for the Factory Tour to ensure that you get an English speaking guide! You can visit the Museum without booking but the factory is what you really want to see As above, use the form on the website to book. If you're a member of one of the official DOC Clubs (DOCGB, DSC, SDC, UKMOC) then the tour is free otherwise it is €10 per person. Ducati location and directions information to visit us
There's a small discount to be had if you're an owner and can present your owner's card, then entry becomes €8.
Oh and on entry you get a discount card for the small store on site, from memory it was €5 discount on a spend of €25 or more.
