Virtus Pallacanestro Bologna is an Italian League professional basketball club, based in Bologna. Virtus is one of the most important and titled basketball teams in Europe.

Virtus was founded in 1871 as a gymnastics club, and fielded its first professional basketball team in the 1920s. The club has won 15 national league titles in Italy's top division and 8 Italian Cups. It has also been a frequent participant in the Euroleague, the basketball equivalent to football's Champions League. Virtus' best season, as measured by trophies won, was 2000-01, when it won the Italian League, Italian Cup, and Euroleague titles all in the same season, giving the club the coveted Triple Crown championship for the year (though the latter came against the field that did not include all of Europe's national champions as some of them competed in FIBA Suproleague that year). They also won the Euroleague in 1998, led by club hero and icon Predrag Danilović.

Several key members of Virtus' treble-winners left immediately after that accomplishment. After the 2001-02 season, Manu Ginóbili, the Final Four MVP of Euroleague 2000-01, left for the NBA, as did Marko Jarić. At the end of the 2002-03 season, Virtus suffered relegation from Italy's top division as a result of financial problems.

Bologna (Italian pronunciation: [boˈloɲɲa] ( listen); Emilian: Bulåggna pronounced [buˈləɲɲa]; Latin: Bononia) is the principal city (capital) of the Emilia-Romagna Region in Northern Italy. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history, art, cuisine, music, and culture. It is the seventh largest city in terms of population in Italy and it is the heart of a metropolitan area (officially recognized by the Italian government as a metropolitan city) of about 1,000,000 inhabitants. The urban sprawl of Bologna, including nearby Modena, whose metropolises are adjoining, is continuously expanding.

The city, the first settlements of which date back to at least one millennium before Christ, has always been an important urban center, first under the Etruscans (Velzna/Felsina) and the Celts (Bona), then under the Romans (Bononia), then again in the Middle Ages, as a free municipality (for one century it was the fifth largest European city based on population). Home to the oldest university in the world, University of Bologna, founded in 1088, Bologna hosts thousands of students who enrich the social and cultural life of the city. Famous for its towers and lengthy porticoes, Bologna has a well-preserved historical centre (one of the largest in Italy) thanks to a careful restoration and conservation policy which began at the end of the 1970s, on the heels of serious damage done by the urban demolition at the end of the 19th century as well as that caused by wars.