Death in the High City

A successful decade for Bergamo’s first British crime novel

Via Colleoni is pictured on 
the cover of the new edition

Death in the High City, the first detective novel written in English to be set in Bergamo, was published ten years ago this summer.

To mark the tenth anniversary, East Wind Publishing have issued a new edition of the mystery with a front cover showing Bergamo’s Via Colleoni at night. The historic street in the Città Alta, Bergamo’s upper town, features as a key location in the novel.

Referred to as un romanzo giallo in Italian, Death in the High City centres on the investigation into the death of an English woman staying in Bergamo while working on a biography of the opera composer Gaetano Donizetti, who was born and died in the city.

The dead woman had been living in an apartment in Bergamo’s Città Alta and much of the action takes place within the walls of the upper town.

The novel was the first in a series to feature the characters of Kate Butler, a freelance journalist, and Steve Bartorelli, a retired Detective Chief Inspector, who is of partly Italian descent.

At first the local police do not believe there is enough evidence to open a murder enquiry and so journalist Kate Butler, the victim’s cousin, arrives in Bergamo to try to get some answers about her relative’s death, on behalf of her elderly aunt, who is too frail to make the journey herself.

Kate visits many of the places in Bergamo with Donizetti connections and her enquiries also take her out to Lago d’Iseo and into the countryside around San Pellegrino Terme.

But after her own life is threatened and there has been another death in the Città Alta, her partner, Steve Bartorelli, joins her in Bergamo to help unravel the mystery and trap the killer.

Bergamo's mayor, Giorgio Gori,
was given a copy of the book

The reader can enjoy Bergamo’s wonderful architecture and scenery from the comfort of their own armchair, while savouring the many descriptions in the novel of local food and wine.

Author Val Culley has been delighted with the level of interest shown in what was her first novel, both in the UK and in Italy.

She was invited to present Death in the High City to an audience in San Pellegrino Terme and sign copies of the book, as a guest at the fifth anniversary celebrations of Bergamo Su e Giù, a group of independent tour guides based in the city. During the evening, she was presented with a book about San Pellegrino Terme by the town’s mayor.

She also made two appearances on Bergamo TV to talk about the novel with presenter Teo Mangione during his daily breakfast programme. During one of her visits to the studios, she presented a copy of the book to the Mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, who took office the year the novel was published.

Val was invited to Bergamo for a further visit by the Cambridge Institute to give a talk about Death in The High City to a group of 80 Italian teachers of English and to sign copies for them.

She has also formally presented a copy of Death in the High City to the Biblioteca Civica (Civic Library), a beautiful 16th century building in white marble, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, situated in Piazza Vecchia, a location that features frequently in the novel.

She was later invited to give a talk about Death in the High City at a sixth form college in Zogno, a comune in Valle Brembana set in beautiful countryside in the hills above Bergamo.

Another highlight was when the New York Times referred to Death in the High City in a travel feature they were running about Bergamo.

The novel came out in Kindle format in May 2014 and a paperback version was released in July 2014. It has since sold copies in the UK, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, America, Australia, Canada, and Mexico.

Death in the High City will interest readers who enjoy the ‘cosy’ crime fiction genre, or like detective stories with an Italian setting.

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Andrea Moroni - architect

The other talented Moroni from Bergamo

Moroni's home town of Albino occupies a 
position in Val Seriana, near Bergamo

Bergamo-born architect Andrea Moroni, who designed many beautiful buildings in Padua and the Veneto region, died on 28 April 1560, 536 years ago today, in Padua.  

Moroni designed acclaimed Renaissance buildings but has tended to be overlooked by architectural historians because his career coincided with that of Andrea Palladio.

Born into a family of stonecutters, Moroni was the cousin and contemporary of Giovan  Battista Moroni, the brilliant portrait painter. They were both born in Albino, a comune - municipality - about 14km (nine miles) to the north east of Bergamo, in Val Seriana, which was given the honorary title of city in 1991.

Moroni the architect has works attributed to him in Brescia, another city in Lombardy about 50 km (31 miles) to the south east of Bergamo. He is known to have been in the city between 1527 and 1532, where he built a choir for the monastery of Santa Giulia.

He probably also designed the building in which the nuns could attend mass in the monastery of Santa Giulia and worked on the church of San Faustino.

As a result, he made a name for himself with the Benedictine Order and obtained commissions for two Benedictine churches in Padua, Santa Maria di Praglia and the more famous Basilica di Santa Giustina.

Andrea Moroni was the architect behind the
Basilica di Santa Giustina in Padua

His contract with Santa Giustina was renewed every ten years until his death and he settled down to live in Padua.

He was commissioned by the Venetian Government to build the Palazzo del Podestà, which is now known as Palazzo Moroni in Via VIII Febbraio, and is currently the seat of Padua city Council. It is considered one of the most significant Renaissance buildings in the entire Veneto region.

Moroni was also involved in the construction of the Orto Botanico, Padua’s famous botanical gardens, where medicinal plants were grown, and he designed some of the university buildings.

It is known that he supervised the construction of Palazzo del Bo, the main university building in the city, but there is some controversy over who designed the palace’s beautiful internal courtyard. Famous names such as Jacopo Sansovino and Palladio have been suggested, rather than Moroni, contributing to his talent tending to be overlooked over the centuries. 

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Visit Bergamo’s Civic Archaeology Museum

Civico Museo Archeologico di Bergamo

The museum is housed in a 14th century
palace in Piazza della Cittadella

You can travel in the footsteps of the Celts, Romans and Longobards who built Bergamo by visiting the Civic Archaeology Museum to see the wealth of artefacts that have been uncovered over the centuries in the city and the surrounding area.

Items dating back to the Neolithic period in prehistoric times reveal Bergamo’s ancient origins. Stone axes, iron swords, Celtic bronze ornaments and Longobard gold crosses are among the items on display in the museum. Bergamo’s Roman period is particularly well represented with a wealth of sculptures, inscriptions, tomb stones and funerary items.

The Civic Archaeology Museum is now housed in a 14th century palace in Piazza della Cittadella in the Città Alta, but its collection dates back as far as 1561, when Bergamo’s Great Council established ‘a collection of antiquities’ for people to view in the loggia under Palazzo della Ragione in Piazza Vecchia in the Città Alta.

The original display of artefacts has increased hugely over the centuries thanks to the many valuable items that have been unearthed locally and donated to the collection and the museum has had to move to many different locations in the city as it kept requiring more space.

The museum has collections of artefacts from
many periods of history unearthed locally

A special publication registering the most notable archaeological discoveries in the care of the museum was published in 1900 by Professor Gaetano Mantovani. All the important finds were gathered together in the 1930s and given a home in the Rocca fortress, where they were kept safe during World War II.

The collection was moved in 1960 to its present location, where it now occupies the ground floor of a palace built in the 14th century by the Visconti family. Milan’s ancient rulers, in Piazza Cittadella.

There are rooms displaying prehistoric, bronze age, Iron age, gallic and Longobard items. There is plenty of evidence from the Roman period in Bergamo, with an important collection of funerary epigraphs from the area. There are rooms devoted to the city’s history from the early urban settlement of the fifth century BC to the Roman city becoming a municipium in the age of Caesar- Augustus. Artefacts from the Longobard duchy in the early Middle Ages include fascinating examples of the pieces of armour worn by soldiers at the time.

The museum is open between October and December from 9.00 to 13.00 and 14.00 to 17.00 Thursday and Friday and from 10.00 to 13.00 and 14.00 to 17.30 on Saturday and Sunday.

The entrance ticket is three euros and the ticket is also valid for entry to the Natural Science Museum, also in Piazza della Cittadella. 

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Bergamo curiosities, clocks and curfews

Look out for some of the quaint architectural features of the Città Alta

A set of stone gargoyles on the wall above
Palazzo della Ragione's covered staircase

Bergamo’s upper town, the Città Alta, is full of medieval buildings, towers and houses and many of them have unusual, quaint architectural features, so it’s worth taking your time when you are walking round to see what you can spot.

The faded frescoes you will see are indications that the outsides of buildings would have been much more colourful hundreds of years ago than they are today. But it is worth looking at the frescoes to try to see what the artist painted. If there is a portion missing, let your imagination fill it in so that you can understand what it would have been like in its heyday. Good places for fresco spotting are Piazza Mascheroni, Piazza Cittadella and Via Porta Dipinta.

There are grotesque stone carvings on many of the medieval buildings in the Città Alta that would have meant something to the stone mason responsible for adding them hundreds of years ago.

The bells in the Campanone still
chime at 10pm each night

Of particular interest are the set of stone gargoyles on the wall to your right as you start to climb the 16th century covered staircase that leads to the first floor of Palazzo della Ragione, known as the Hall of the Capriate. These were taken centuries ago from a funeral monument in the former convent of San Francesco.

The paved area at ground floor level can be accessed from both sides through the porticos. It is usually empty these days but in the past has been used as an open civil and criminal court, where the prisoner had to sit on a white stone seat, and also as a place for people to watch puppet shows. These were popular with adults as well as children because they enjoyed the clever lampooning of local dignitaries and political situations of the day by the puppeteers.

Inside the porticos under Palazzo della Ragione, if you look at the paving, you will see white marble slabs among the grey with engraved ellipses. This is a sundial, or solar clock, designed by Giovanni Albrici in 1798, which points north and indicates the passage of the sun through the meridian, at 12 noon.

The Meridiana Monumentale sundial
is a particular curiosity

Like most things in Bergamo it has been well preserved. In 1982 restoration work was carried out on it and the mechanism was modified to enable the date to be shown as well.

When the sun shines, as it often does in Bergamo, it passes through a small hole in a metal plate attached to one of the arches and as it shines into the porticoes you can see what time it is.

The enormous Campanone (big bell tower) on the other side of the piazza also helps visitors to Bergamo to tell the time. It comes into its own at 10pm every evening when it chimes more than 100 times to remind people still outside the Città Alta of the curfew and give them chance to get back through one of the gates, or otherwise be locked out for the night.

They don’t lock the gates of the Città Alta any more, but have maintained the tradition of sounding more than 100 chimes at 10pm.

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Trattoria Tre Torri Bergamo

Enjoy dining out in a truly medieval atmosphere

Trattoria Tre Torri is housed inside
a medieval tower

Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to live in a medieval tower in Bergamo’s Città Alta?

Well, you can easily sample the medieval atmosphere for just a couple of hours by having lunch or dinner at Trattoria Tre Torri in Piazza Mercato del Fieno in the Città Alta. The square is just off Via Gombito to the right, almost opposite the enormous Torre Gombito. It was once the site of the Città Alta’s hay market and the piazza is still bordered by three medieval tower houses, which have been cut down from their former heights but are still the original structures.

One of the houses, which used to be owned by Bergamo’s rich and powerful Suardi family, has a pretty little balcony under a double arched mullioned window.

Another tower on the square, opposite the three adjoining towers, houses the Trattoria Tre Torri, which serves good quality local food at reasonable prices. There are some tables for two but you can also sit at large wooden tables with benches if you are a larger party.

The original stone has been left exposed on the inside walls. One night when I went there for dinner with my family it was raining heavily outside and we were amused to notice the rain running down the walls inside, but we still felt very warm and cosy and enjoyed the meal.

The three adjoining towers on the square
were once much taller

The staff are very friendly and the menu has many traditional Bergamo dishes to try, such as casoncelli alla bergamasca - a kind of ravioli - stinco al forno - pork shank - and dishes with the local type of polenta. They stock local Bergamo wines and also serve a good house wine.

There is all the atmosphere you would expect to experience when dining in a genuine medieval tower and there are also tables outside under an awning for dining during the summer. 

Piazza Mercato del Fieno is where the Città Alta’s post office is located and it also has some shops and bars. It is a good place to stand to take a photograph of the Gombito tower, which looms high above Via Gombito. The square is on higher ground and is sufficiently far away to enable you to capture a shot that includes the top of the tower.

Trattoria Tre Torri is located at Piazzo Mercato del Fieno 7.

The original medieval brickwork is a feature of Trattoria Tre Torri's cosy interior

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Giacomo Quarenghi – Bergamo architect

Neoclassicist was famous for his work in Russia

Giacomo Quarenghi was born
in a village not far from Lecco

The architect Giacomo Antonio Domenico Quarenghi, known for his work in Italy and in St Petersburg in Russia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was born in 1744 in Rota d’Imagna, a village in Lombardy about 25km (16 miles) northwest of Bergamo, near the lakeside town of Lecco.

Quarenghi’s simple, yet imposing, Neoclassical buildings, which often featured an elegant central portico with pillars and pediment, were inspired by the work of the architect, Andrea Palladio.

As a young man, Quarenghi was allowed to study painting in Bergamo despite his parents’ hopes that he would follow a career in law or the church. He travelled widely through Italy, staying in Vicenza, Verona, Mantua and Venice in the north and venturing south to make drawings of the Greek temples at Paestum before arriving in Rome in 1763. His first focus was on painting, but he was later introduced to architecture by Paolo Posi.

His biggest inspiration came from reading Andrea Palladio's Quattro Libri d'archittetura, after which he moved away from painting to concentrate on the design of buildings.

He returned to Venice to study Palladio and came to meet a British peer who was passing through Venice on the Grand Tour. It was through him that Quarenghi was commissioned to work in England, where his projects included an altar for the private Roman Catholic chapel of Henry Arundell at New Wardour Castle.

His first major commission in Italy (1771–7) was for the internal reconstruction of the monastery of Santa Scholastica at Subiaco, just outside Rome, where he was also asked to design a decor for a Music Room in the Campidoglio. He drew up designs for the tomb of Pope Clement XIII, but these were later executed by Antonio Canova.

The Russian Academy of Science is based at
one of Quarenghi's St Petersburg palaces

In 1779 he was selected by the Prussian-born Count Rieffenstein, who had been commissioned by Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great, to send her two Italian architects.  Quarenghi, then 35, was finding it hard to generate enough work amid fierce competition in Italy, so he accepted the offer without hesitation, leaving immediately for St Petersburg, taking his pregnant wife with him.

Quarenghi's first important commission in Russia was the magnificent English Palace in Peterhof, just outside St Petersburg, which sadly was blown up by the Germans during World War II and was later demolished by the Soviet government.

In 1783 Quarenghi settled with his family in Tsarskoe Selo, the town which was the former seat of the Russian royal family, where he would supervise the construction of the Alexander Palace.

Soon afterwards, he was appointed Catherine II's court architect and went on to produce a large number of designs for the Empress and her successors and members of her court, as well as interior decorations and elaborate ornate gardens.

His extensive work in St Petersburg between 1782 and 1816 included the Hermitage Theatre, one of the first buildings in Russia in the Palladian style, the Bourse and the State Bank, St. George’s Hall in the Winter Palace (1786–95), several bridges on the Neva, and a number of academic structures including the Academy of Sciences, on the University Embankment.

Rota d'Imagna is a beautiful village in the
Lombardy countryside 25km from Bergamo

Quarenghi’s design for the Hermitage Theatre in St Petersburg was heavily influenced by his visit to the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza as he toured Italy as a young man. The theatre, constructed between 1580 and 1585, was the final design by Andrea Palladio and was not completed until after his death. The trompe-l'œil onstage scenery, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, gives the appearance of long streets receding to a distant horizon. The theatre is one of only three Renaissance theatres still in existence.

His work outside St Petersburg included a cathedral in Ukraine and among his buildings in Moscow were a theatre hall in the Ostankino Palace. He was also responsible for the reconstruction of some buildings around Red Square in Moscow in neo-Palladian style.

He obviously never forgot his northern Italian roots because he showed his appreciation for Catherine II’s patronage by giving her a case of Bergamo’s prestigious wine, Moscato di Scanzo.

The grapes for this rich, ruby red wine are grown in vineyards in a small, area of countryside just outside Bergamo, land that is about 31 hectares wide only. This is the only territory where the grapes can be grown for Moscato di Scanzo.

A wine that has earned the title Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG), the highest grade given to a wine in Italy, Moscato di Scanzo is made from grapes harvested solely from the fields around Scanzorosciate, a town about six kilometres (four miles) to the northeast of Bergamo in the foothills of the southern Alps.

The Biblioteca Angelo Mai in Bergamo has
a collection of Quarenghi's designs

But Quarenghi was less popular with Catherine II’s son and successor, the Emperor Paul, although he enjoyed a resurgence of popularity under Alexander I. When the famous architect returned to Italy from time to time he always received an enthusiastic welcome.

Quarenghi retired in 1808 but remained in Russia, even though most of his 13 children by his two wives chose to return to Italy.

He was granted Russian nobility and the Order of St. Vladimir of the First Degree in 1814. He died in Saint Petersburg at the age of 72.

Rota d’Imagna, Quarenghi’s birthplace, is situated in the Imagna Valley, a popular tourist spot because of its largely unspoilt landscape and spectacular mountain views, with many visitors attracted to trekking, mountain walks and horse riding. In the village itself, the Church of Rota Fuori, dedicated to San Siro, which was built in 1496 and restructured in 1765, has art works of significance by Gaetano Peverada, Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli and Carlo Ceresa.  Quarenghi’s home was Ca’ Piatone, a palace built in the 17th century.

Bergamo remembered him by naming a street Via Giacomo Quarenghi in the Citta Bassa. Also, in 2017 the city marked the 200th anniversary of his death with a programme of events to honour him.

In Piazza Vecchia in the Città Alta, the library, La Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai, has a collection of 750 architectural designs by Giacomo Quarenghi. These are available to the public on a DVD with texts in Italian or in English.

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