Bergamo

The Orobii, a Ligurian tribe, first settled the hill in the Iron Age, and around 550 BC it was taken by the Celtic Cenomani. Bergomum became a Roman municipality in 49 BC, a town of about 10,000 on the military road between Friuli and Raetia, until Attila destroyed it in the 5th century. Under the Lombards it was the seat of one of their main duchies, and after Charlemagne a county.

From the 11th century Bergamo was a free commune and joined the Lombard League against Frederick Barbarossa, while its Guelph and Ghibelline factions, the Colleoni and the Suardi, feuded within the walls. In the 13th century Omodeo Tasso organised the city's couriers, the start of the Thurn und Taxis family's postal service. After a spell under the Malatesta from 1407, Milan ceded Bergamo to Venice in 1428, and Venetian rule lasted more than three and a half centuries; in the 16th century Venice ringed the upper town with the massive walls that still stand.

The French ended Venetian rule in 1797, and after 1815 Bergamo passed to Austrian Lombardy–Venetia; its railway station opened in 1857. Garibaldi took the city in 1859, and so many of his Thousand came from here that it is called the Città dei Mille. In the 20th century the province became one of Italy's most industrialised, and Piacentini's plan of 1912–27 created a new lower centre. The walls became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017, and in early 2020 Bergamo was among the places in Europe hit hardest by Covid-19, when images of army trucks carrying the dead out of the city went round the world.

Music is Bergamo's great pride. Gaetano Donizetti, one of the leading composers of bel canto opera, was born here in 1797, is buried in Santa Maria Maggiore and gives his name to the opera house, where Verdi made his debut with Ernani; an opera season in his name continues the tradition. The historic Teatro Sociale in the upper town adds to the stage, and the city hosts a jazz festival and, with Brescia, an international piano festival.

Art is the other strength. The Accademia Carrara combines an art gallery with an academy of fine arts, Lorenzo Lotto painted frescoes in San Michele al Pozzo Bianco, and the GAMeC shows modern and contemporary work. The Bergamo Film Meeting brings art-house cinema each March. The sculptor Giacomo Manzù and the fashion designers Nicola Trussardi and Mariuccia Mandelli of Krizia were all born here.

The upper and lower towns have their own names in the Bergamasque dialect, Bèrghem de sura and Bèrghem de sóta. The Campanone still sounds its old curfew each night, the patron saint's feast fills the city in August, and football loyalty runs deep: Atalanta, a Coppa Italia and UEFA Europa League winner, is followed with passion, and its old rivalry with Brescia carries on with that city's new club.

About 120,600 people lived in Bergamo in 2026, making it the fourth-largest city in Lombardy, and just under 500,000 live in its wider urban area, itself part of Milan's metropolitan region. Around five in six residents were born in Italy; the largest groups born abroad come from Bolivia, Morocco, Albania, Romania and Bangladesh. The city is divided into twenty-five neighbourhoods, from the old borghi to postwar districts.

The economy rests on banking, retail and services linked to the industries of the province, where companies such as the brake maker Brembo and the steel group Tenaris have strong ties to the city. The airport, one of the busiest in Italy, and its role as the second most visited city in Lombardy after Milan make tourism increasingly important. The University of Bergamo, founded in 1968, has campuses in the upper town and the lower city.

Daily life moves between the two levels: offices, shops and the station below, students and visitors on the hill. The loss of so many older residents in 2020 left a lasting mark on the city.

Bergamo's signature dish is casoncelli alla bergamasca, stuffed pasta filled with breadcrumbs, eggs, Parmesan, minced beef and salami or sausage, sometimes with raisins, amaretti or pear, and served with melted butter flavoured with sage. Polenta, as across Lombardy, is the everyday partner for meat and cheese.

The valleys north of the city make some of Italy's best-known cheeses. Taleggio, named after the Val Taleggio, is a semi-soft washed-rind cow's-milk cheese with a thin edible rind, a strong aroma and a comparatively mild flavour, and the same valley makes Strachitunt. The city's best-known sweet is polenta e osei, a sweet version of the old dish of small birds served with polenta: sweet polenta covered with yellow almond paste and decorated with chocolate or marzipan birds.

Stracciatella, milk gelato with fine strands of drizzled chocolate, was first made in Bergamo at the Ristorante La Marianna in 1961 and is now served across Italy. Many restaurants and pastry shops line the Corsarola and Via Gombito in the upper town, while Borgo Santa Caterina has more everyday bars and trattorias.