THE

CHAPTER X

BERGAMO

HERE is a corner of Italy-let us confess it, it is only a corner-where that accursed disease of Industrialism, the cancer that is eating away our virility, has unfortunately taken root: that corner I seemed to leave behind me at Monza. At least, I know I was altogether in another country when one autumn evening I came to the beautiful city of Bergamo, on the hills, over against the mountains, upon which the snow was lying far away, very pure and white; against which, in her girdle of ancient walls, the city stood up lofty and splendid, her towers all shining in the setting sun.

Bergamo, as we know it, consists of two separate parts which might seem to have nothing really in common: there is the Città Bassa, anciently the Borgo, in the illimitable plain at the foot of the hills, an almost completely modern town, and quite separate from it the true Bergamo, the old Etruscan, Gaulish, Roman and Italian city, on the hill-top, the Città Alta, as beautiful a place as is to be found in all Lombardy, and almost completely of the Middle Age and the Renaissance.

In the Città Bassa there are a few churches which either for their own sakes or for what they contain are of interest to us. Such are S. Alessandro in Colonna, which is dedicated to the patron of Bergamo, and contains a fine picture of the Assumption by Romanino; S. Bartolommeo, which contains a great altarpiece by Lorenzo Lotto and some fine choir stalls of the sixteenth

century; S. Spirito, a church of the Early Renaissance, which contains a large and beautiful altarpiece by Borgognone, and a Madonna with Saints and Angels by Lotto; S. Bernardino in Pignolo, with another altarpiece by Lotto; S. Alessandro della Croce, with a Madonna by Moroni, and in the sacristy a portrait by the same master and a picture of the Trinity by Lotto. Apart from these churches, the Città Bassa has little interest, and is indeed a rather miserable place, a little infected by the modern disease of which I have spoken.

It is far different with the Città Alta. There everything is old and beautiful, full of honour, virility and endurance. Unsuited to the modern restlessness and hurry, unapproachable by the railway, the true Bergamo still dreams on her fair hill-top of all we in our foolishness have forgotten, and, deserted by the Gadarene herd, who long since have rushed down her steep hillside into the mire of the plain, she still keeps her dreams about her, content to await every even the curfew from the Torre Comunale, and to ask for the protection of her two patrons, S. Alessandro and the Blessed Virgin, at sunset.

I have said enough to tell the traveller that something unique and lovely awaits him in Bergamo, but no amount of description can hope to convince him of the virile beauty of the place, the magical beauty of the Piazza Maggiore to which all those steep, narrow, winding ways lined with great palaces seem to lead, the picturesque and virile beauty of the grand old tower that rises over it, the charm of the Broletto built upon arches, as at Como, through which one has glimpses of the splendour beyond. Here in Bergamo there is nothing frowning, miserable or unhappy; she is gay and yet stately, bright, noble and sure of herself. There is nothing in all Lombardy better and lovelier than she.

Her history is a tale that is told. Known to the Romans as Bergomum and held strongly by the Lombards in the Dark Age, from 1264 to 1428, she came into

the power of Milan, and then, after falling to a condottiere, Pandolfo Malatesta, the father of Sigismondo, she gave herself to Venice, and remained Venetian till 1797. It is not, however, of history one thinks in Bergamo, but of beauty and of art.

Through the mud and squalor of the Città Bassa, one is borne nowadays in a few moments from the station to the Città Alta in an electric tram and a funicular railway. A better way, for those who have leisure to indulge it, is perhaps to take the road through the wide and unordered Foro di S. Alessandro, where every year in August a great fair that lasts a month has been held now for a thousand years, and following the Via Nuova, to enter the true Bergamo by the Porta di S. Agostino, whence we may see so far across the plain, even to the towers of Milan and Monza, the passes of the great Alps, Monte Rosa and the pyramid of Monte Viso, and southward the Apennines across the great river, with Crema close by and Cremona not far away. Nothing can make up, I think, for the loss of this view, which in itself explains so much of the nature of this country, so difficult to traverse for all its flatness. It is one of the unexpected gifts Bergamo has in keeping for us, but the best of these is herself.

She gives you herself utterly at that moment when, emerging from the narrow ways between the tall, rugged houses, you come into the Piazza Maggiore, paved with brick, with a ruined fountain in the midst, and on one side the stateliness and beauty of the Broletto on its arcade of columns, on the other the Palazzo della Ragione, which Scamozzi left unfinished. Through the arches of the Broletto you catch glimpses of the magnificent portal of S. Maria Maggiore and the façade of the Cappella Colleoni; but it is never by this way I prefer to approach these wonders, but by a devious way from the east past the Palazzo dell' Ateneo, with its early Renaissance façade and flights of steps, so that