Places to visit in Bergamo: discover them with the App about the city

Smartrippin, the first touristic app to discover the places to visit in Bergamo, offers the opportunity to know a charming city with a dual personality: its modern and dynamic lower part and its unmissable artistic and architectural upper part.

Towards the end of the Nineteenth Century, the citizens of Bergamo needed a fast way to link the two parts of the city. In 1887 the solution was made: the cable car. The altitude gap is 85 meters and the maximum slope reaches 52%. The route lasts a few minutes but it is worth the effort.

Beside the cable car, Bergamo has a great number of paths that link the Lower City and the Upper City. This ways offers a wonderful view of the city and fascinating glimpses. Thanks to the staircases it is possible to reach some part of the city in a short time, walking through rural background, sorrounded by bare stones, wildflowers, cultivated terraces, gardens.

Piazza Vecchia is the point from which you have to start in order to discover the thousand-year old history of the city. Avenues, squares, religious monuments, interesting buildings starts from this point. First you can go round the Contanarini fountain, looking at the buildings facing the old square: southwards there is Palazzo della Ragione with its white San Marco lion in the center; on its right there is Palazzo del Podestà. Going on clockwise there is Angelo Mai library and finally on the eastern side you can find some palaces with rests of frescos and a way that led to the rectory, the place where the clergy lived.

In Piazza Vecchia there is also the Campanone Tower. In the past its tolls signed moments of comunity life as celebrations, bereavement, work, board meetings. At the sunset the bell stroke 100 tolls informing the people outside the Wall that the gates of the Upper City were going to be closed. It is right this nowadays.

Among the place to visit in Bergamo, Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza del Duomo can’t be missed. It is also called “Chapel of the city” and it was built during the XII century. It is Romanesque outside and in Baroque style inside. The most pompous entrance is on its left side, the “red lions door”, whereas the others are the “white lions door” and the “Fountain door”.

There is also here the Colleoni Chapel, work of the Renaissance designed by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo and requested by Bartolomeo Colleoni as a mausoleum for him and his beloved doughter Medea.

The Venetian Wall, strong fortification built by the Venetians during the second half of the Sixteenth Century, represents the favourite walk of the citizens of Bergamo and of tourists. An extraordinary terrace overlooking the city and the plain. The outlook is very striking: Lower City, the plain, the hills and the mountains to the South, the old Burg with walls, towers, paths, the harmony of the materials that frames with the nature.

In the Lower City, in front of Donizetti Theater, there is a tree-lined avenue called Sentierone, with a porch that run along it and a floor of stone. It was opened by the merchants of Bergamo in 1620 and it was the place of negotiations of the nearby fair of Sant’Alessandro. Now is a place to walk for citizens. You can enjoy relaxing moments set at one of the cafès that overlook the way.

These are just some of the places to visit in Bergamo and in order to discover all the treasures and the splendors of the city you can download Smartrippin, a precious tour guide.