Flights from UK airports to Bergamo Orio al Serio

Visitors to Bergamo from the United Kingdom currently can choose from six airports that operate services to Bergamo's Orio al Serio airport, which is a popular arrival point for visitors to Milan and the Italian Lakes as well as the city of Bergamo itself.

The airport is situated only six kilometres from the centre of Bergamo. A bus service connects the airport terminal with Bergamo's Città Bassa (lower town) and Città Alta (upper town). The journey takes about 15 minutes to Città Bassa, 25 minutes to Città Alta.

Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) operates flights to Bergamo from Bristol, East Midlands, Glasgow Prestwick, Liverpool and London Stansted. Jet2.com flies from Leeds-Bradford.

Flight schedule (Ryanair, except where stated)

From Bristol
Until October 29 -- Tuesday, Saturday: 12:50; Thursday: 08:25.
From October 30 to March 20, 2012 -- Sunday: 17:00; Tuesday: 08:15 (no flights December 25, January 1).
Flight time: 2hrs 5mins.

From East Midlands
Until October 28 -- Wednesday, Friday, Sunday: 11:50.
Flight time: 2hrs 5mins.

From Glasgow Prestwick
Until October 28 -- Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 17:45.
Flight time: 2hrs 30mins.

From Leeds-Bradford (Jet2.com)
Until October 31 -- Monday: 15:30; Wednesday: 10:45; Friday: 12:25; Saturday: 14:05.
Flight time: 2hrs 20mins.

From Liverpool
Until October 28 -- Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 19:00.
Flight time: 2hrs 15mins.

From London Stansted
Until October 29 -- Daily: 06:40, 14:00, 19:10.
From October 30 to March 24, 2012 -- Sunday to Friday: 06:30, 14:29, 19:15; Saturday: 06:30, 09:50, 19:15 (No flights December 24, 25, 26, 31 & January 1).
Flight time: 1hr 55mins.

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Browse among the historic buildings of Brescia

The railway station at Brescia

Brescia, Lom-bardy’s second city after Milan, can be reached by train from Bergamo in just under an hour.

Although it is a place of great artistic and architectural importance, it is not as well known to tourists as some of the other historic Italian cities, but is well worth a visit if you are staying in Bergamo for any length of time.

There are direct trains every hour from Bergamo’s railway station in Piazza Marconi in the Città Bassa (lower town).

Brescia became a Roman colony before the birth of Christ and you can still see remains from the forum, theatre and a temple.

The town was fought over by different rulers in the middle ages but came under the protection of Venice in the 15th century.

There is a distinct Venetian influence in the architecture of the Piazza della Loggia, an elegant square in the centre of the town, which is the site of the main Ufficio d’Informazione Turistiche (tourist information office) and has a clock tower remarkably similar to the one in Saint Mark’s square in Venice.

Next to the 17th century Duomo is an older cathedral, the unusually shaped Duomo Vecchio, also known as la Rotonda, which is open to the public and worth a look inside.

The Santa Giulia Museo della Città covers more than 3,000 years of Brescia’s history, housed within the Benedictine Nunnery of San Salvatore and Santa Giulia in Via Musei.

The nunnery was built over a Roman residential quarter, but some of the houses, with their original mosaics and frescoes, have now been excavated and can be seen while you are looking round the museum.

If you decide to spend the night in Brescia in order to do justice to everything there is to see, a good base would be the Hotel Meuble Orologio in Via Cesare Beccaria, which is close to the Piazza della Loggia and only a few minutes walk away from the Santa Giulia museum.

The hotel is housed in an historic building but has plenty of modern facilities and you can enjoy breakfast on a terrace with panoramic views of the city.

Book with venere.com or LateRooms.com

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Thousands set to line Bergamo streets to celebrate Atalanta's promotion to Serie A

Atalanta's Stadio Comunale in Bergamo

If you happen to be in Bergamo this Saturday evening, don’t make plans for a quiet stroll along Viale Papa Giovanni XXIII.
The long, straight main thoroughfare that runs from the railway station in the Città Bassa (lower town) in the direction of the Città Alta is expected to be thronged with as many as 100,000 people as the Bergamo soccer team, Atalanta, celebrates promotion to Serie A, Italy’s equivalent of the English Premier League.
Atalanta have been out of the elite division only for one year but their instant return has delighted club president Antonio Percassi, who has invited the whole town to join in La Notte NeroAzzura -- the night of the black and blues.
He has even ordered the rapid manufacture of 20,000 flags in the club's black and blue colours to encourage supporters to display their allegiance.
“I’d like to see the Atalanta colours on display on every balcony, in every window across the whole province of Bergamo,” Percassi said.
A triumphal parade along Viale Papa Giovanni XXIII, with the victorious players greeting supporters from the team coach, will be the culmination of celebrations that begin at Atalanta’s final home match against Cittadella, which kicks off at 15:00 at the Stadio Comunale.
A celebration of music and dance on the pitch will mark the entrance of the players, who will re-emerge after the game has finished to thank fans for their support during the season.
Meanwhile, along Viale Papa Giovanni XXIII, street entertainers will keep the crowds amused while giant television screens at the Propylae -- the pillared gateway at Porta Nuova -- and nearby Piazza Vittorio Veneto will show highlights from Atalanta’s season.
The team coach will leave Piazza Matteotti at 21:00 to proceed slowly along Viale Papa Giovanni XXIII, turning round in front of the railway station at Piazzale Marconi before heading back in the opposite direction.
Once back at Piazza Matteotti, the players will disembark to be presented to supporters on a stage erected in the square. Celebrations will continue until around midnight.
The NeroAzzuri clinched promotion with a 4-1 victory over next-to-bottom Portosummaga, a club from the town of Portogruaro in Veneto, in their last home game and followed that with a win at relegation-threatened local rivals, Albinoleffe, last Monday to lead the Serie B table by three points from Siena.
Another win on Saturday and they would need only one point from their final game, away to Tuscan team Grosseto, to be promoted as champions, an honour that might be handed to them sooner if Siena fail to beat promotion-chasing Varese at home on Monday.

Route the team coach will follow
(see the official Atalanta Calcio website)

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Birth of the first Lady of Lovere

The village of Peschiera Maraglio on Monte Isola

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, an English aristocrat whose writing helped to put Lago d’Iseo on the map, was born 322 years ago today.
Now thought of as one of the earliest female English travel writers, Lady Mary was born in London on 15 May, 1689.
She lived for nearly ten years in Lovere on Lago d’Iseo near Bergamo during the later years of her life and constantly praised it as a holiday resort. She is reputed to have once declined an invitation to the Venice carnival saying: “There are plenty of things to do in this village, which, by the way, is one of the most beautiful that exists.”
Lovere is the largest town on the western shore of Lake Iseo and is an easy journey from Bergamo by car or coach.
Resorts on the eastern shores can be reached from Bergamo by taking the train to Brescia and changing to a train that runs alongside the lake to reach Edolo.
There are several points on both sides of the lake from where you can take a boat across to Monte Isola, the island in the middle of the lake that is the largest of its kind in Europe.
Lady Mary travelled extensively at the beginning of the 18th century with her husband, who was appointed British ambassador to Turkey. During this time she wrote the poetry and letters that established her literary reputation.
She became an advocate of inoculation against smallpox, having witnessed the practice on her travels.
But she left her husband in 1739 and went to live in Italy alone. It was on the advice of her doctor that she moved from Brescia to Lovere, where she bought an old palace. She spent happy years there designing her garden and reading the books her daughter sent out to her from England.
She enjoyed entertaining local nobility and making the occasional trip to Genova and Padova, inspired to write poetry by the beauty of Lago d'Iseo and the “impassable mountains” surrounding it.
While living in Lovere she wrote in a letter to her daughter: “I am now in a place the most beautifully romantic I ever saw in my life.”

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Bergamo on front cover of ITALIA! magazine

ITALIA! magazine on display in W H Smith

Bergamo is featured in the June issue of ITALIA! magazine, which has just gone on sale.

A six-page spread in the UK’s best selling magazine about Italy takes a look at the city as a destination for a 48-hour break, highlighting the main things to see and do and recommending hotels, restaurants, local dishes and wine.

Written by freelance travel writer Val Culley (the editor of Best of Bergamo), the feature demonstrates that there are beautiful buildings and places of historic importance to see on both sides of Bergamo’s imposing 16th century walls.

It is accompanied by 18 images showing Bergamo at its best in the spring sunshine.

ITALIA! magazine’s front cover advertises ‘The Beauty of Bergamo – a tale of two cities – unlock the secrets in this corner of Lombardy’, illustrated by an atmospheric picture of the towers of the Citta Alta (upper town) swathed in mist.

ITALIA! magazine Issue 79 June 2011 is on sale in branches of W H Smith. For more information about the magazine visit www.italia-magazine.com

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Bergamo postal palace was designed to impress

The post office in Via Masone

The main post office in Bergamo is in the Città Bassa (lower town) in Via Masone on its corner with Via Antonio Locatelli.

Like many buildings in the Città Bassa , il palazzo delle Poste is an impressive piece of architecture, designed to follow on from the development of the lower town at the beginning of the 20th century.

Built of brown stone, the building has a tall clock tower and the long windows typical of 1930s architecture.

The Poste e Telegrafi building was planned in 1929 by Angiolo Mazzoni and completed in 1932.

Mazzoni married the daughter of Mussolini's Minister of Communications, Galeazzo Ciano, and his career benefited from his close connections with the Fascist regime, who were keen to use dynamically modern architecture to encourage the Italian people to associate Fascism with progress. 

He became chief architect for the Ministry of Communications and for the state railways, which were at the heart of the Fascist rebuilding programmes.  Hundreds of post offices and railway stations around Italy were built from Mazzoni designs.

Detail from the plaque outside the post office

It is well worth a look inside to enable you to appreciate the scale and style of the building, with its glass lamps and works of art by Mario Sironi, commissioned to decorate the ground floor sala dei telegrammi.

The post office can be easily reached from Viale Vittorio Emmanuele by walking down Via Zelasco.

View Il Palazzo delle Poste in a larger map


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