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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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.

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The Bergamo chorister who grew up to be a celebrated tenor famous around the world

Giovanni Battista Rubini was born
 in Romano di Lombardia in 1794

Giovanni Battista Rubini, born on this day in 1794 in Romano di Lombardia in Bergamo province, grew up to be an international star in opera, a tenor as famous in his day as Enrico Caruso would be almost a century later.

Blessed with an exceptionally high yet beautifully lyrical voice, his popularity ended the dominance of the castrati in the leading male roles in opera and he is credited with launching the era of the bel canto tenor. 

He formed close partnerships with Vincenzo Bellini and Bergamo's own Gaetano Donizetti, his popularity boosting their standing among composers of the day.

At the peak of his fame, Rubini alternated between Paris and London, singing at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris and His Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket, London.  He toured Germany and Holland with Franz Liszt in 1843 and in the same year performed in St. Petersburg, Russia, where Czar Nicholas I appointed him Director of Singing and made him Colonel of the Imperial Music. 

Precociously talented, Rubini was just 12 when he was taken on as a violinist and chorister at the Riccardi Theatre in Bergamo. He was 20 when he made his professional debut in Pietro Generali’s Le lagrime d’una vedova at Pavia in 1814, then sang for 10 years in Naples.  

In 1825 he sang the leading roles in Gioacchino Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Otello, and La donna del Lago in Paris and was soon regarded as the leading tenor of his day. 

Teatro Donizetti is built on the site of Teatro Riccardi,
where Rubini was a violinist and chorister as a boy

Bellini wrote many operas specifically with Rubini's voice in mind, giving him the tenor leads in Il pirata, La sonnambula and I Puritani, in which he starred alongside the soprano Giulia Grisi, the baritone Antonio Tamburini and the bass Luigi Lablache, who collectively became known as the “Puritani quartet.”

The four also appeared together in Donizetti's Marino Faliero during the same season. Rubini premiered Donizetti's La lettera anonima, Evida, Il giovedì grasso, Gianni di Calais, Il paria and Anna Bolena. 

In 1845 he retired to Romano di Lombardia and bought a palazzo there, which became a museum after he died in 1854, a month short of his 60th birthday.

Teatro Riccardi stood on the site of Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo's Città Bassa.  Opened in 1791, it was destroyed in a fire in 1797 and reopened in 1800.  It was renamed Teatro Gaetano Donizetti, now commonly shortened to Teatro Donizetti, in 1897, the centenary of the composer's birth. 

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Accademia Carrara

Palace filled with art treasures is a major attraction in Bergamo

One of the biggest jewels in Bergamo’s crown, the prestigious art gallery Accademia Carrara, is shining even more brightly now it is open to the public again.

The magnificent palace just outside the Città Alta, which was built in the 18th century to house one of the richest private collections of art in Italy, had been closed for renovation work for seven years.

It is the only Italian museum to be entirely stocked with donations and bequests from private collectors. Visitors can now view a broad-ranging collection of works by the masters of the Venetian, Lombard and Tuscan renaissances as well as great artists who came later, such as Lotto, Titian, Moroni, Rubens, Tiepolo, Guardi and Canaletto, to name but a few.

Restored Accademia the day it reopened

The reopening of the Accademia Carrara in April this year sparked great celebrations in Bergamo, after the museum had been closed for so long for restoration and maintenance work.

Following a spectacular opening ceremony and party the museum opened its doors to the public for the first time on 24 April. Thousands of people were waiting outside in Piazza Giacomo Carrara to get their first look inside the refurbished building.

Visitors can now walk through 28 rooms to view more than 600 major works by artists and sculptors spanning five centuries.

Highlights include: Madonna and Child by Andrea Mantegna; Portrait of Leonello d’Este by Pisanello; Three Crucifixes by Vincenzo Foppa; Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini; The Story of Virginia the Roman by Sandro Botticelli; The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine by Lorenzo Lotto; Madonna and Child in a Landscape by Tiziano Vecellio; Madonna with Baby and Saints by Palma il Vecchio; Portrait of an Elderly Man seated by Giovan Battista Moroni; The Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi by Antonio Canal Canaletto.

A Canaletto masterpiece

The Accademia Carrara was established in Bergamo in 1794 on the initiative of Bergamo 

aristocrat Count Giacomo Carrara as a combined Pinacoteca and School 

of Painting.  In addition to his collection of paintings he left his entire estate to the Accademia to secure its future.

The number and quality of works in the Accademia increased over the years thanks to the many donations and bequests received from private collectors.

From being a museum dedicated to Renaissance painting, the Accademia grew into an art gallery that also provided a broad representation of pictorial genres from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

For part of the time the gallery was closed, the gems of the collection went on show in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. And visitors to Bergamo were able to see some of the paintings on display in the Truss Room of Palazzo della Ragione in Piazza Vecchia.

Painting depicts the death of Bergamo composer Donizetti

But now one of the richest collections of art in Italy is back where it belongs, in the Palace built specially to house it, in Bergamo’s Città Bassa.

Accademia Carrara in Piazza Giacomo Carrara is just outside the walls of the Città Alta, a short walk from Porta Sant’Agostino.

Accademia Carrara is open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10 am to 7 pm; Friday from 10 am to 12 pm and Saturday and Sunday from 10 am to 8 pm. It is closed on Tuesday. For more information visit www.lacarrara.it.

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Death in the High City first anniversary

Successful year for Bergamo’s first English crime novel

Death in the High City, the first British detective novel to be set in Bergamo, has had an exciting first year.

The novel, which was published in Kindle format on Amazon 12 months ago today, has sold copies in the UK, Italy, America, Australia and Canada. A paperback version of Death in the High City was published in July 2014.

Author Val Culley has had some heart warming emails and messages about the book from readers both in the UK and abroad and has been delighted with the level of interest in her first novel.

With the Colleoni Chapel in the background

In October 2014 Val was a guest at the fifth anniversary celebrations of Bergamo Su e Giù, a group of independent tour guides in the city. She was invited to present Death in the High City to an audience in San Pellegrino Terme and sign copies of the book and she also made an appearance on Bergamo TV to talk about the novel with presenter Teo Mangione.

In November the book was purchased by Leicestershire Libraries and is now in stock at Loughborough, Shepshed, Ashby de la Zouch, Coalville, Castle Donington and Kegworth Libraries and is going out on loan regularly.
In April this year Val was invited to Bergamo again to present her novel to a group of 80 Italian teachers of English and to sign copies. She made a second appearance on Bergamo TV and also formally presented a copy of Death in the High City to the Biblioteca Civica (Civic Library) in Piazza Vecchia, a location that is featured in the novel itself.

Death in the High City centres on the investigation into the death of an English woman who was staying in the Città Alta while writing a biography of the composer Gaetano Donizetti.

On display in a library

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

The victim 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 local police do not believe there is enough evidence to open a murder enquiry and so Kate Butler, who is the victim’s cousin, arrives in Bergamo to try to get some answers about her death.

Kate visits many of the places in the city with Donizetti connections and her enquiries even 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 lover, Steve Bartorelli, joins her to help unravel the mystery and trap the killer. The reader is able to go along for the ride and enjoy Bergamo’s wonderful architecture and scenery while savouring the many descriptions in the novel of local food and wine.

The novel will be of interest to anyone who enjoys the ‘cosy’ crime fiction genre or likes detective novels with an Italian setting.

Death in the High City by Val Culley is available on Amazon.com.

Best of Bergamo’s updated Flights Guide

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Celebrating Christmas Bergamo style

With Italian specialities readily available in the shops there is no reason why you can’t recreate a traditional Bergamo Christmas in your own home.

Panettone, Pan d’Oro and Panforte are great alternatives to Christmas pudding and Prosecco is, in my opinion, better than Champagne.

Prosecco, cake and a novel set in Italy

While you may not be able to find authentic Bergamo sausages or meats for your antipasti or not want to go to the trouble of making your own casoncelli alla bergamasca for your primo piatto, you can find good quality prosciutto and salami and stuffed pasta in most shops.

Christmas is very much a family feast in Bergamo, just as in the rest of Italy .

After la Vigilia di Natale (Christmas Eve), when traditionally a fish meal is consumed, Natale (Christmas Day) is a time for feasting.

While the children open their presents, the adults savour a glass of Prosecco as they prepare the festive table.

Friends and relatives who drop in with presents or to exchange good wishes will be offered nuts, biscuits and torrone (nougat from Cremona.)

Antipasti dishes of prosciutto and bresaola are served with preserved mushrooms, olives or pickled vegetables.

Stuffed pasta is usually served as a first course, either in the shape of ravioli or tortellini, which are said to have been offered as Christmas gifts to priests and monks during the 12th century.

For the main course, turkey or capon is likely to be served, with potatoes and vegetables as side dishes.

The traditional end to the meal is almost always Panettone, served warm accompanied by a glass of sparkling wine.

Panettone is said to have been concoted by a Milanese baker, Antonio (Toni), to impress his girlfriend at Christmas time in the 15th century. The result was so successful that ‘Pane de Toni’ has become a regular feature of the Christmas season all over Italy and now abroad.

The feasting and family parties continue on 26 December, the festa di Santo Stefano (Boxing Day).

To transport you back to Bergamo over the festive season, why not read Death in the High City, a crime novel in which much of the action takes place in Bergamo’s Città Alta.

Death in the High City by Val Culley is available from Amazon.com

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Casa Natale di Gaetano Donizetti

Birthplace is now a national monument

It is both humbling and inspiring to visit the birthplace of Bergamo composer Gaetano Donizetti, just outside the walls of the Città Alta (upper town).

Donizetti was born into a large family living in the basement of a house in Borgo Canale on 29 November 1797, a date that was to be of major significance for music and opera.

Entrance to Donizetti's birthplace

The Casa Natale (birthplace), which has now been declared a national monument, is open to visitors free of charge every weekend and it is well worth a visit to see the conditions in which the musical genius spent his early years.

You can still see the well from which the family drew their water and the fireplace where meals were cooked, which would have also been their only source of heating.

Music from Donizetti’s operas echoes around the basement while you study the exhibition that commemorates his life and career, helping you to reflect on the amazing journey he made from his place of birth to being acclaimed in theatres all over the world when he was at the height of his success.

The child born 217 years ago today in these humble surroundings went on to become a prolific composer of operas in the early part of the 19th century and was a major influence on Verdi, Puccini and many other Italian composers who came after him.

To reach Donizetti’s birthplace, leave the Città Alta through Porta Sant’Alessandro and go past the station for the San Vigilio funicolare. Borgo Canale is the next street on the right and the Casa Natale, at number 14, in the middle of a row of characteristic, tall houses, is marked by a plaque.

The family's only source of water

Donizetti was the fifth of six children born to a textile worker and his wife.

He once wrote about his birthplace: “…I was born underground in Borgo Canale. One descended the stairs to the basement, where no ray of sunlight had ever been seen. And like an owl I flew forth…”

Donizetti developed a love for music and despite the poverty of his family benefited from early tuition at a special music school that had been set up in Bergamo to train choirboys.

He went on to compose some of the greatest lyrical operas of all time such as Lucia di Lammermoor and L’Elisir d’Amore.

After a magnificent career Donizetti returned to Bergamo as a sick man and died in 1843 in the Palazzo Scotti, where he was living at the time with friends. The street in the Città Alta where the palazzo is situated was later renamed Via Donizetti in his honour.

There is also a museum dedicated to his life and career in the Città Alta, within the former Palazzo Misericordia Maggiore, which is still being used to house a musical institute, in Via Arena. 

Donizetti’s tomb is in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza Duomo in the Città Alta.

Fireplace where the family would gather round

A monument dedicated to him was erected in the Città Bassa in Bergamo in 1897, 100 years after his birth.

It is close to the theatre on the corner of Via Sentierone that was renamed Teatro Donizetti in honour of the composer.

Casa Natale is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays from 10.00 to 13.00 and 15.00 to 18.00. From Monday to Friday, visits to the house are by appointment only.

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Death in the High City

Brand new detective story taking place in Bergamo

A new crime novel set in Bergamo has just been published on Amazon Kindle.

The novel is the first in a series featuring detective duo Kate Butler, a freelance journalist, and Steve Bartorelli, a retired Detective Chief Inspector who is of Italian descent.

Believed to be the first British crime novel to put the spotlight on Bergamo, Death in the High City centres on the investigation into the death of an English woman who was writing a biography of the composer Gaetano Donizetti.

Of interest to anyone who enjoys the cosy crime fiction genre or likes detective novels with an Italian setting, the book is currently available as a Kindle edition, but can also be read on smartphones, tablets and computers using Amazon’s free Kindle app.

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 high city. The local police do not believe there is enough evidence to open a murder inquiry so Kate Butler, who is the victim’s cousin, arrives on the scene to try to get some answers about her cousin’s death.

Kate visits many of the places in Bergamo with Donizetti connections and her enquiries even take her out to Lago d’Iseo. But after her own life is threatened and there has been another death in the Città Alta, her lover, Steve Bartorelli, joins her to help her unravel the mystery and trap the killer. The reader is able to go along for the ride and enjoy Bergamo’s wonderful architecture and scenery while savouring the many descriptions in the novel of local food and wine.

Death in the High City by Val Culley, published in May, 2014, is now available on Amazon.

See Best of Bergamo’s updated Flights Guide

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