Distant Day Out - Bergamo

After my trip to Egypt ended, there was a day spare between my flight back to London. That was by design - my family and I were going to visit Bergamo in that time, and there was enough in that lengthy walk to put into a blogpost. You can't visit every last place in a matter of a few hours, but I think we did our best to cover significant parts of the city. Then again, you can never adequately summarise the home of hundreds of thousands people in words. Here goes (and for those who don't enjoy these travel posts, it's the last one):

Citta Alta (Upper Town)

There are a few ways you can access this old town, which is also a Unesco heritage site. The first and simplest way is by a funicular - a simple track which takes you into the area, and goes no further. Another way is by foot, and after seeing the queues to the station, we opted to walk there. It's not the longest distance, and is made up of a single winding path, rewarding you with a view of the city centre once you've walked up there. Unfortunately, it was a bit foggy when I visited, so the photo isn't the best.

Citta Alta itself is renowned for the walls which surround the town, built in the 16th and 17th centuries and which acted as forts which the Republic of Venice used to defend itself. Five other such forts are listed by Unesco - two in Italy, two in Croatia, one in Montenegro - and would have helped to enable Venice to expand ever further, with new military innovations, such as the use of gunpowder, contributing to the forts' designs. Four gates lie around the whole of the fort in Bergamo, and annoyingly I took a photograph of one of them (Porta San Giacomo) which forgoes half of it (I was more focused on the sky when taking the shot).

Piazza Vecchia

The whole of the area is brimming with history, not least the Piazza Vecchia. This was once the municipal centre of the town, what with the Palazzo della Ragione standing here. This palace was built in 1198, and has been a court, library and theatre over various different stretches of times. It was the site of an art exhibition when I visited (a four month long exhibition of Yayoi Kusama's work, if you're curious). One thing that was hard to not notice, though, was the magnificent architecture of the palace as you passed underneath it, what with it looking like clay trees (the photo to the left will better explain it). 

Another thing hard to escape from is the countless art, dotted around the town. Here and there, paintings, often Biblical, adorned the walls of houses, and one was hidden behind a frame. And when you're in an area with a rich religious background, you shouldn't be surprised if there's art to be found inside. Take the Cappella Colleoni for instance, with its walls and ceiling covered end to end with countless frescoes, some based on legends like Hercules' four labours, others on Biblical events. I could only see as such from the entrance, though, because tickets are rather costly. The clocktower is also rather hard to miss, and the clockface itself is highly ornate - the whole town has plenty of precision put into all its buildings, such that walking down the street can be pleasant to the eye. 

And then there's this lovely building, which I later realised is an archaeological museum. A man was sweetly playing the violin (I think) by the structure, which only made the city seem even more wonderful than it had before. Just on the other side was a natural history museum, and both of these sites form a small education complex, what with the city's university centred nearby too. And after that, we decided to visit somewhere else.

Atalanta Stadium

I convinced my family to head down to Atalanta, the local football team, and their stadium, which is sponsored by electrical engineering firm Gewiss. Otherwise, the official name of the stadium translates to the Stadium of the Blue Athletes of Italy, which I personally think is a better name. It's been open since 1928 and has since then been often renovated, with its capacity increasing to its current amount of 24,000. When I was passing the stadium, however, renovations were still taking place to one of the stands, thus shrouding part of it in scaffolding. The other side, though, was exposed and so you could walk up to the turnstiles along the Curva Nord stand, the banner above them completely covered with various club stickers. Graffiti and stickers mocking rivals Brescia could also be found. 

In those near-hundred years, Atalanta has grown as a football club - though historically yoyo-ing between the first and second tiers, with twelve relegations from Serie A in the eighty years following on from the stadium's opening, they've become a regular fixture in Europe, reaching the Champions League quarterfinals four years ago. Perhaps it's not the most prominent landmark in the city, but the stadium itself looks rather nice from the outside, and I'm sure it's even better on matchdays. 

Local River

As I was walking back from the stadium towards the main station, I noticed a river flowing just off the main street. I believe it's called the Morla, which flows through the city centre before linking up later with the Serio, a much longer river which eventually drains into the Po. The Morla may not be all that intriguing a river, often disappearing beneath buildings for a while and not overly exposed when not, but after not having seen a river the whole time during my visit, it was nice to finally spot one.

Epilogue

Soon I had to get to the airport to head back home. We felt like we'd seen most of the city already, so off we headed to Milan Bergamo by bus, with the airport sometimes coming off more like a shopping centre than an airport. Not bad for one mainly operated by budget airlines. 

Overall, Bergamo is a wonderful-looking city, one I sort of wish I had spent more time in before. The architecture especially is the main reason anyone should go, and the best thing to do there is perhaps just walk around and admire it.