Upper City and Lower City: the secrets of Bergamo

What is that long iron bar, with different measurement units, doing mounted there beside the cathedral doors? Why does the bell of the most important medieval tower ring one hundred times every night at 10:00? Questions, sometimes trivial, sometimes fundamental, that evoke the most intimate heart of a place or an entire city. What type of questions does Bergamo suggest in people who are, for the first time, wandering its streets, the cobblestones of its many asymmetrical market squares, in the shadows of cloisters and porticoes? Every person from Bergamo will tell you that they have had to answer this question at least once in their lives: “Above or below?” Usually the person asking the question is imitating the local dialect, a difficult language even for locals, generally resulting in an unclear phrase that is somewhere between comical and incomprehensible. The question arises automatically outside the city limits because, as everyone is aware, Bergamo is really two cities in one, the Upper or Old City and the Lower or...