Remembering artist Giovanni Paolo Cavagna

Prolific painter left a rich legacy of religious works in Bergamo

Frescoes by Giovanni Paolo Cavagna 
illuminate the dome of Santa Maria Maggiore

Late Renaissance painter Giovanni Paolo Cavagna, who became famous for his religious works of art, died 396 years ago today in his native city of Bergamo.

Cavagna was mainly active in Bergamo and Brescia, for most of his career, although he is believed to have spent some time training in Venice in the studio of Titian.

The artist was born in Borgo San Leonardo in the Città Bassa in about 1550. The painter Cristoforo Baschenis Il Vecchio is believed to have taken him as an apprentice from the age of 12. Cavagna is also thought to have spent time as a pupil of the famous Bergamo portrait painter Giovanni Battista Moroni.

Cavagna’s work can still be seen in many churches in Bergamo and villages in the surrounding area. In the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in the Città Alta there are paintings by him of the Assumption of the Virgin, the Nativity, and Esther and Ahasuerus.

The Church of Santa Spirito in the
 Città Bassa has works by Cavagna

In the Church of Santa Spirito in the Città Bassa, there are his paintings of Santa Lucia and the Crucifixion with Saints. He painted a Coronation of the Virgin for the Church of San Giovanni Battista in the province of Casnigo, which is to the north east of Bergamo, and some of his paintings can also be seen in the sanctuary of the Madonna del Castello in Almenno San Salvatore, a province to the north west of Bergamo.

The artist also completed a painting of the Crucifixion for the Church of Santa Lucia in Venice.

Cavagna’s son, Francesco, who became known as Cavagnuola, and his daughter, Caterina, also became painters.

After his death in Bergamo in 1627, Cavagna was buried in the Church of Santa Maria Immacolata delle Grazie in the Città Bassa, but after the reorganization of the lower town in the 19th century, the church was rebuilt and Cavagna’s tomb had to be moved, and it is now uncertain what happened to it.

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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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Enrico Caffi Natural Sciences Museum

Bergamo takes pride in museum’s amazing collection

Bergamo is well known for its art treasures and musical heritage but perhaps not widely recognised as a centre for science.

The Museo Civico Scienze Naturali Enrico
Caffi is in Piazza Cittadella

However, in the historic upper town, the Città Alta, there is a prestigious natural history museum with thousands of fascinating artefacts for visitors to see.

The Museo Civico Scienze Naturali Enrico Caffi (The Civic Museum of Natural Sciences Enrico Caffi) is in Piazza Cittadella, a square close to Colle Aperto and Porta Sant’Alessandro.

A reproduction of a huge mammoth greets customers in the entrance hall. Inside the museum, exhibits are divided into the categories of zoology, entomology, geology and palaeontology.

There are examples of all five classes of vertebrates, along with a collection of anthropods.

The museum’s origins date back to the end of the 19th century when exhibitions were held during public holidays of the artefacts from the Royal Technical Institute Vittorio Emanuele II.

Dottore Enrico Caffi was the
museum's first director

In 1918, the museum moved to Piazza Vecchia in the Città Alta and in 1920, Dottore Enrico Caffi was appointed as the first director of the museum and organised the cataloguing of all items in the museum’s collection. Caffi was an expert on the Parco delle Orobie outside Bergamo and devoted his time to studying the flora and fauna. He left a large quantity of manuscripts with scientific articles about his findings and maps of the territory.

Under successive professors the museum was expanded and studies were made of Lago Endine and the Brembo and Serio rivers.

In 1969, the museum moved to its present headquarters in Piazza Cittadella. Four years later, a fossil of the oldest known flying creature was found in Seriana valley. The creature, who lived more than two million years ago, was described for the very first time by Rocco Zambelli, who was responsible for the paleontology section of the museum.

The museum now has laboratories for educational purposes and a sensory path with Braille captions for blind visitors.

In normal times the Natural Sciences Museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday, but it has temporarily closed due to Covid 19. Visit www.museoscienzebergamo.it for more information.

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Antonio Ferramolino – Bergamo military engineer

Brief but brilliant career building fortifications

Bergamo-born architect and military engineer Antonio Ferramolino died on this day in 1550 during the siege of Mahdia in Tunisia.

He is remembered in Bergamo by a road named after him on the outskirts of the city, Via Antonio Feramolino, which is a turning off Via Grumello, the main road running through Grumello del Piano.

Bergamo's own defensive walls were built by the
 Venetians, 11 years after Ferramolino's death

Ferramolino, who is also sometimes referred to as Sferrandino da Bergamo, began his career as a soldier, but by 1529 he was known to have been overseeing the construction of artillery for the Venetian Arsenal.

He fought against the Ottomans in Hungary in 1532 and was also present at the conquest of Tunis in 1535.

In 1536, the Emperor Charles V sent Ferramolino to review the fortifications of Messina and other parts of Sicily. During the next few years he designed fortifications for Messina, Palermo, Catania and Milazzo in Sicily.

In 1538 he went to the Republic of Ragusa, which is now Dubrovnik in Croatia, to design the Revelin Fortress, a series of defensive stone walls that proved impossible to breach. In 1540 he went to Malta, where he designed the Fort of St. Angelo and other fortifications.

Ferramolino died on the battlefield in Tunisia on 18 August 1550 after being hit by a lead ball fired from an arquebus during the siege of Mahdia.

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Bergamo Capital of Culture 2023

Chance for city to showcase rich artistic and musical heritage

As Bergamo cautiously reopens after the devastation caused by the Covid-19 epidemic, the city has received a welcome boost from the Italian government.

The Chamber of Deputies has approved the candidature of Bergamo, jointly with Brescia, as Italian Capitals of Culture 2023.

Bergamo's Teatro Donizetti

This is being seen as a symbol of recovery by the two cities, who both suffered badly during the worst of the pandemic earlier this year.

Once the selection of Bergamo and Brescia is given the formal go-ahead by the Italian senate, the cities can begin drawing up plans to present to Italy’s ministry of culture.

What better setting could be found for a year of cultural events than the beautiful city of Bergamo with its rich history of artistic and musical achievement? 

The city’s Accademia Carrara houses one of the richest private collections of art in Italy.

The Teatro Donizetti, named in honour of opera composer Gaetano Donizetti who was born in Bergamo, presents an enormous variety of operas, concerts, jazz and other cultural events each year.

The imposing walls, le Mura, built by the Venetians to enclose Bergamo’s upper town have been declared a Unesco World Heritage site.

The Venetian walls surrounding the upper town.

Piazza Vecchia, with its wealth of medieval architecture has been described as the most beautiful square in Italy. 

And Cappella Colleoni in Piazza Duomo is said to be the finest Renaissance building in northern Italy, if not in the whole of Italy.

Bergamo’s capital of culture partner, Brescia, to the south east, is also a city of great artistic and architectural importance. Although it is the second city in Lombardia, after Milan, and has Roman remains and well-preserved Renaissance buildings, it is perhaps not as well-known to tourists as Bergamo.

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

The beautiful Piazza Vecchia in Bergamo

The town came under the protection of Venice in the 15th century and there is a distinct Venetian influence in the architecture of the Piazza della Loggia, an elegant square in the centre of the town. 

The Santa Giulia Museo della Citta covers more than 3000 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 frescos, have now been excavated and can be seen while looking round the museum.

See Best of Bergamo’s updated Flights Guide

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Church of Sant’Agostino Bergamo

A gem of Gothic architecture, the beautiful Church of Sant’Agostino, lies close to Porta Sant’Agostino, the gate marking the eastern entrance to the Città Alta.

The Gothic facade of the church of Sant'Agostino

The de- consecrated church was originally part of a monastery complex but is now used as a lecture theatre by Bergamo’s University and is also a venue for art exhibitions and events.

The sandstone church was built in Gothic style by the Eremitani Friars in 1290 and then passed to the Observant Friars in 1407, both belonging to the Sant’Agostino order.

By the 17th century the monastery complex had become an important centre for religious and cultural research.

Above the central rose window there is a marble statue of Sant’Agostino in a niche.

Inside, you can still see the medieval frescoed walls and original wooden ceiling beams.

It is believed the monastery complex once sheltered Martin Luther, who stayed there for one night on his way to Rome on the eve of his excommunication.

The open area in front of the church was once used as a defensive bastion for the city but is now the Fara park, a green space where sport is played and tired tourists can sit and relax.

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Palazzo della Ragione Bergamo

Medieval palace was once used as a courthouse

The facade of the 12th century Palazzo della Ragione is an iconic image of Bergamo’s upper town, the Città Alta. 

But the most photographed and admired building in Piazza Vecchia hides many fascinating secrets.

If you step under the archways into what was once the ground floor of the building, you are entering what used to be Bergamo’s courthouse.

The white seat was where the prisoner would have to sit

During the period of Venetian domination the judges used to preside over legal proceedings there and would take a decision based on their ‘reason’, in Italian ‘ragione’. This is how the medieval palace acquired its name.

You will see a row of stone seats along one of the palace’s walls but only one of the seats is white. This is the so called ‘Seat of Shame’ where the prisoner accused of the crime would have had to sit during the legal arguments.

Take a seat there yourself and imagine what it would have been like to be someone accused of a crime in the 16th century when the Venetians first took control of Bergamo. The defendant would have been very glad to be able to stand up and walk into Piazza Duomo and continue sightseeing, as today’s visitors can!

The palace has been damaged by fires over the centuries and has had to be rebuilt many times.  It is said that the ground floor walls were removed to allow a view through the arches into Piazza Duomo. This enables visitors to see the stunning pink and white facade of the Colleoni Chapel, which is in stark contrast to the dark stone of Palazzo della Ragione. 

The facade of the medieval Palazzo della Ragione

The grand covered stairway, which dates from 1453, rises from Piazza Vecchia to the first floor of the palace. There are 13th and 14th century frescoes, which were taken from old churches and houses in the area, decorating the upper hall.

The palace was mentioned in a document of 1198 and is therefore believed to be the oldest communal building in Italy.  It was once used for meetings of Bergamo’s civic authority, but it has also been a theatre and a library and occasionally acted as an art gallery.

The carving of the lion over the central window of the palace was added to the exterior of the building to mark the domination of the Venetians over Bergamo. The current lion is actually a 20th century replica of the 15th century original, which was torn down when the French took control of Bergamo in 1797.

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Porch of Santa Maria Maggiore Bergamo

Statue of Sant’Alessandro stands above Basilica entrance 

One of the most important and beautiful churches in Bergamo, the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza Duomo in the Città Alta, has so many fascinating architectural details that it is impossible to take them all in on your first visit.

The Basilica was built in the 12th century in the shape of a Greek cross but was modified in the 14th and 16th centuries.

The loggia above the entrance to the Basilica

The Basilica’s sacristry was demolished in the 15th century to make way for the Colleoni Chapel, which was built on the orders of Bergamo’s famous condottiero, Bartolomeo Colleoni, to house his own tomb.

The Colleoni Chapel, which stands next to Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza Duomo, was designed by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo to harmonise with the architecture of the Basilica and it has come to be acknowledged as one of the finest Renaissance buildings in Italy.

But the porch to the left of the Colleoni Chapel, one of two entrances to the Basilica, is just as architecturally beautiful and can certainly hold its own with the Colleoni Chapel.

The entrance to Santa Maria Maggiore from Piazza Duomo was built by the architect Giovanni di Campione between 1351 and 1353. Above the archway there is a loggia with three arched niches containing statues. The Saints Barnaba and Proitettizio stand on either side of a statue of Bergamo’s patron saint, Sant’Alessandro, who is on horseback. You have to look up before you ascend the steps to the Basilica or you will miss it.

Every year on 26 August Bergamo commemorates the date in 303 that Sant’Alessandro was martyred by the Romans for refusing to renounce his Christian faith.

The porch is next to the Renaissance gem,
 the Colleoni Chapel

It is believed Alessandro was a devout citizen who had continued to preach Christianity in Bergamo, despite several narrow escapes from the Romans, but that he was eventually caught and suffered decapitation.

A series of religious, cultural and gastronomic events take place in his name over several days at the end of August throughout the city, which is decorated with festive lights.

Porta Sant’Alessandro, the gate which leads from the Città Alta to Borgo Canale and San Vigilio, was built in the 16th century as part of a massive project to protect the historic upper town with defensive walls. 

It was named after a fourth century cathedral that had originally been dedicated to the saint, but was later demolished by the occupying Venetian forces who were overseeing the rebuilding of the walls.

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