Visit Bergamo: how to reach the Upper City?

Are you planning a trip in order to visit Bergamo?

If the day is sunny and the temperature is warm, it’s worth a stroll to reach the Upper City in Bergamo.

There are a lot of ways and steps that start from Lower City and reaching to the heart of the medieval village. They are made with cobbles and porphyry, except the one that runs along the Venetian Wall which is paved.

As it is obvious they are all uphill, but they are not too demanding and the impression that you get while you walk is to be finished at the beginning of the 20th century, in an agricultural country.

Right at the start of the funicular of viale Vittorio Emanuele II, for example, you can take one of these steps – Scaletta in italian – an old mule track that leads up to Porta San Giacomo, one of the four gates that allow access to the city.

To get straight to the Centre of the Upper Town, in the area around Piazza Vecchia, you can take several little streets that wind through the ancient houses of the village. In front of Porta San Giacomo, for example, starts the street that leads to piazza Mercato delle Scarpe where the upper cable car station is set.

Continuing along the path of the Venetian Wall, on the other hand, the road makes a curve and reveals, on the right, other uphill streets leading to the City Center: via Simone Mayr, named after the German master of Donizetti, rejoins at Bettami lane and both lead to Piazza Rosate on which overlooks the rear portal of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

On the top of the hill of the Upper City is set the castle of San Vigilio, a building located in a strategic position that, by the 6th century, allowed control of the valleys and of the plains below. It can be reached by cable car, but obviously following some steep streets. From Lower City there are steps that climb among gardens, terraces, villas and fields, steps that tell of an agricultural past, sometimes still intact.

There are unlimited ways to walk to the Upper City of Bergamo you just have to have a geo-localized map between your hands and opens a world of steps and paths that take you back in time.

Visit Bergamo to discover its treasures.