Piazza Vecchia
The drawing room of the upper town: the Contarini fountain, the Palazzo della Ragione and the Campanone bell tower, which still rings a hundred strokes every evening at ten.
Location
Via Gombito 32, 24129 Bergamo
Via Gombito is the street that leads to Piazza Vecchia: a hundred metres of cobbles and you are there. The Cathedral and Santa Maria Maggiore are two minutes away, the funicular down to the lower town four hundred. Downstairs there are the arcades with their shops, and in the evening you hear the Campanone bell from your bed.
Porta Antica
Via Gombito 32, 24129 Bergamo
Nearby
- Piazza Vecchia100 m
- Bergamo Cathedral150 m
- Santa Maria Maggiore and the Colleoni Chapel200 m
- Funicular to the lower town400 m
- Venetian Walls (UNESCO)450 m
- Orio al Serio airport7 km
Getting here
By plane
Milan Bergamo airport (Orio al Serio) is 7 km away. About 20 minutes by taxi; by ATB bus line 1 you reach the lower town and continue by funicular.
By train
Bergamo station is 3 km away. From the station square, bus line 1 takes you to the funicular on Viale Vittorio Emanuele, which climbs to the upper town in five minutes.
By car
The upper town is a limited-traffic zone. Send us your number plate before arrival: we register the permit and tell you where to leave the car.
On foot
Piazza Vecchia, Santa Maria Maggiore and the Colleoni Chapel are a few minutes' walk away. The Venetian Walls, a UNESCO site, are best explored on foot.
Bergamo
Two cities, one above the other
Bergamo is made of two halves that look at each other. Below sits the modern town, with the shops, the Sentierone and the Donizetti Theatre. Above, inside four kilometres of Venetian Walls listed by UNESCO, is the upper town: an intact medieval centre closed to cars. A funicular links the two in five minutes, for the price of a bus ticket.
What to see
Santa Maria Maggiore and the Colleoni Chapel
A Romanesque basilica with no façade of its own and, beside it, the polychrome marble mausoleum built for the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni. The most photographed corner of the city.
Venetian Walls
Four kilometres of sixteenth-century ramparts, a UNESCO site since 2017. You can walk the whole circuit: at sunset the plain stretches as far as Milan.
Accademia Carrara
One of the most important private collections in Europe, now a public museum: Pisanello, Botticelli, Bellini, Mantegna, Raphael, Canaletto.
Bergamo hills
The park around the city: footpaths, vineyards, monasteries, and the view from the San Vigilio hill reaching all the way to the Prealps.
Bergamo cooking
Casoncelli, polenta taragna and nine PDO cheeses: the Italian province with the most protected cheeses starts right below.