Tasso immortalised by statue in Bergamo

Torquato Tasso's statue
 in Piazza Vecchia

Torquato Tasso, who has come to be regarded as the greatest Italian poet of the Renaissance, died 416 years ago today.

He will never be forgotten in Bergamo because of the large statue of him in front of the Palazzo della Ragione in Piazza Vecchia in the Città Alta (upper town).

Torquato Tasso was the son of a Bergamo nobleman, Bernardo, who was also a poet. Torquato travelled constantly during his 51 years of life and spent two periods only in his father’s native city, but he always wrote about Bergamo with great affection.

His journey ended on 25 April, 1595 when he died in Rome .

Torquato Tasso’s most famous work is his epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered.)

Nearly 100 years after his death, when the statue of him was erected in Piazza Vecchia, the bar next to it, Caffè del Tasso, changed its name. Dating back to at least 1476, the bar would have been known during Tasso’s life as the Locanda delle Due Spade (the Two Swords Inn).

But in 1681 it became Al Torquato Tasso Caffè e Bottiglieria (Torquato Tasso Café and Wine Shop.)

The celebrated poet spent most of his life wandering from one noble court to another but now has a permanent place in Piazza Vecchia in Bergamo’s Città Alta.


View Torquato Tasso's statue in a larger map

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