30 Jul The living gem that is Bergamo
Bergamo is one of our all-time favourite small Italian towns — a medieval hilltop borough bristling with towers and atmospheric buildings that are carefully protected and maintained, so that the visitor feels completely immersed in history.
The town is built on three ascending levels. The modern part of the town sits at the base of the hill, and is a thriving commercial centre with pleasant tree-lined streets, parks and gardens. The upper town, or città alta, is reached via a funicular that carries visitors to the medieval centre, the citadel at the top of the hill. Another funicular takes visitors to the third and highest level of the town, San Vigilio, so-called because of the castle that sits at its summit.
Before heading for the città alta, those interested in art galleries might want to spend time in the Museo Accademico di Carrara which is located just outside the Venetian walls that surround the mediaeval centre. It has an excellent collection of Renaissance and medieval paintings and fine art, and is an important regional museum.
The città alta is a wonderful area for walking, with narrow stone streets that lead through various piazze to offer delightful surprises for the casual wanderer.
The walls, originally built by the Venetians, have never been breached and are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Visitors can walk around, along and even within the walls.
However the undoubted highlight is the Palazzo della Ragione, a twelfth century building that was revamped in the 1500s to meet Venetian aesthetic standards — one of those standards being to make the civic building more important than the church! The Venetians created a new piazza, Piazza Vecchia, by demolishing a building, and then rebuilding the town hall so that it faced onto the new piazza and would be the first thing a visitor would see. They completed the new work with the installation of a charming fountain boasting a series of lovely lions.
The town contains a beautiful and intact religious precinct, with two magnificent churches sitting side by side. One is the duomo and one the basilica. The duomo of Bergamo, San Alessandro, is the principal Catholic Church of the city, built in the mid 1400s, while the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore was funded by local people in a show of wealth and importance in the 1100s. The Bergamaschi traditionally viewed the basilica as the more important church, so when one of the autocratic and powerful local lords had a section of that church demolished in the middle of the night to erect a mausoleum for himself, people were understandably outraged. However, the mausoleum remains and is considered one of the prettiest Renaissance structures in the city to this day.
We’ll be visiting Bergamo – and staying in a medieval tower hotel in the città alta – as part of our Milan and the Italian Lakes tour in May-June 2020.