Bergamo is a unique city in the Lombardy region and one of the most interesting in Italy; divided into the upper town, a real historical and artistic find, and the relatively modern down town which has had business at its core for centuries.

Bergamo Alta is surrounded by mighty Venetian walls which have safeguarded it like a national treasure, meaning that even today it appears to be in pristine condition.

The first traces of settlements on the hill go back to 600 - 400 BC. But it was with Rome that the city became Municipium, being part of Cisalpine Gaul, and deploying, as we would say now, many services. Following the Fall of the Roman Empire were centuries of destruction, a common fate in most of northern Italy, until the arrival of the Franks in 774.

In 1098 Bergamo became a free commune and it was in this century that the construction of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore and the Palazzo della Ragione began. It was however, with the arrival of the Republic of Venice, that Bergamo assumed the unmistakable look of a fortified city.

In the centuries under Venetian rule, therefore during the Renaissance period, the current Old Town Square, the Palazzo della Ragione enriched by symbols of the Maritime Republic, Piazza Mascheroni and many patrician buildings in the city and the suburbs took form with almost austere  facades, ready to reveal through ajar doorways the spectacular gardens and colonnades.

Thanks to this long period of stability and continuous trade with Venice, the city was enriched by works of art that we can admire even today, such as the Colleoni Chapel and the beautiful paintings by Lorenzo Lotto, an artist who worked at length in the territory; the Tiepolo with its frescoes; G.B.Amadeo’s work on the polychrome facade of the Colleoni Chapel, to name but a few.