Bergamo

 

 

 

 

Edward Hutton believed that there was nothing in Lombardy "more beautiful and lovely" than Bergamo. 

 

There is a corner of Italy—let us confess it, it is only a corner—where that accursed disease of Industrialism, the cancer that is eating away our virility, has unfortunately taken root: that corner I seemed to leave behind me at Monza. At least, I know I was altogether in another country when one autumn evening I came to the beautiful city of Bergamo, on the hills, over against the mountains, upon which the snow was lying far away, very pure and white; against which, in her girdle of ancient walls, the city stood up lofty and splendid, her towers all shining in the setting sun.

 

Bergamo, as we know it, consists of two separate parts which might seem to have nothing in common: there is the Citta Bassa, anciently the Borgo, in the illimitable plain at the foot of the hills, an almost completely modern town, and quite separate from it the true Bergamo, the old Etruscan, Gaulish, Roman and Italian city, on the hill-top, the Citta Alta, as beautiful a place as is to be found in all Lombardy, and almost completely of the Middle Age and the Renaissance….Apart from these churches, the Citta Bassa has little interest, and is indeed a rather miserable place…

 

It is far different with the Citta Alta. There everything is old and beautiful, full of honour, virility, and endurance. Unsuited to the modern restlessness and hurry, unapproachable by the railway, the true Bergamo still dreams on her fair hill-top of all we in our foolishness have forgotten, and, deserted by the Gadarene herd, who long since have rushed down her steep hillside into the mire of the plain, she still keeps her dreams about her, content to wait every even the curfew from the Torre Comunale, and to ask for the protection of her two patrons, S. Alessandro and the Blessed Virgin, at sunset

I have said enough to tell the traveller that something unique and lovely awaits him in Bergamo, but no amount of description can hope to convince him of all the virile beauty of the place, the magical beauty of the Piazza Maggiore to which all these steep, narrow, winding ways lined with great palaces, seem to lead, the picturesque and virile beauty of the grand old tower that rises over it, the charm of the Broletto built upon arches, as at Como, through which one has glimpses of the splendour beyond. Here in Bergamo there is nothing frowning, miserable, or unhappy; she is gay and yet stately, bright, noble and sure of herself. There is nothing in all Lombardy better and lovelier than she. …

She gives you herself utterly at that moment when, emerging from the narrow ways between the tall, rugged houses, you come into the Piazza Maggiore, paved with brick, with a ruined fountain in the midst, and on one side the stateliness and beauty of the Broletto on its arcade of columns, on the other the Palazzo della Ragione, which Scamozzi left unfinished. Through the arches of the Broletto you catch glimpses of the magnificent portal of S. Maria Maggiore and the façade of the Capella Colleoni; but it is never by this way I prefer to approach these wonders, but by a devious way from the east past the Palazzo dell’ Ateneo, with its early Renaissance façade and flights of steps, so that what I see first may be the apse of S. Maria with its lovely semicircular open arcade, its flight after flight of roof and gallery and tower up to the pointed steeple which crowns the whole.

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Lombardy, New York, 1912. Pp. 169-172.