From The Sunday Times Travel Magazine January, 2008, issue

There are some excellent reasons for going to Bergamo, a key one being that Ryanair flies there, although, with its trademark geographical vagueness, the airline pretends to be spiriting you to Milan, 45 minutes away. But why travel on to a fashion- and soccer-crazed mega-opolis when here you have a cracking, manageable town that distils the best of northern Italy?

Drawn in behind ramparts like a dowager within her skirts, the upper town is a squeeze of cobbled streets, churches, squares and bars, none of which have noticeably changed since the Venetians ran the place: here a trattoria with hanging hams, there a group of old dears outside their front doors, deep in conversation. From the ramparts, the views are outstanding – Lombardy plains, Bergamo hills and pre-Alp mountains.

What is especially appealing is the vibrancy: this town works hard. It’s said that if you leave a Bergamo bloke with nothing to do for five minutes, he will have built a house by the time you get back. This energy is evident in the lower town, where there are broad avenues, a modern bustle and, apparently, one bank per head of population. But wander into, say, Borgo Sant’Alessandro and you’re in the midst of a labrynthine district where churches and picture framers exist alongside artists, wine bars and kids kicking footballs.

Instant weekend: Bergamo

Rob Kingston gives thanks for those cheap flights that land miles from Milan

• Soak up life on the lakes

• How do I avoid costly airport transfers in Milan?

BACKGROUND

• Getting rid of lumbar pain in a Lombardy spa

• South Tyrol - Italian design appeal

• Soak up life on the Italian lakes

• How do I avoid costly airport transfers in Milan?

• A three-day guide to Lake Como

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Bergamo is ideal for a weekend taste of Italy. You can see everything you need to see and still have time for long lunches and longer dinners. It’s also a fine base for the lakes – the province’s own Lake Iseo or, 40 minutes by train, Lake Como. I’d book now.

HEART OF THE CITY

l Take the funicular from the lower town up the hill and through the ramparts to the start of Via Gombito, the upper town’s principle street. ‘Principle’ in this context means wide enough for two donkeys. Here you’ll find weatherbeaten townhouses, medieval towers and cheese shops from another age, all funnelling the flow of people, many of them weekenders escaping Milan.

l Eat your way back in time. Rustic Pasticceria Cavour (Via Gombito 7) is a potted history of Bergamo, while Pasticceria Donizetti (Via Gombito 17) belches its tables under the market hall and deals in wine and good-value lunches. Skip the polenta, Bergamo’s cornmeal concoction – not as interesting as the locals think. Instead try the good bresaola (cured-beef) salad for £6.50.

l Centrepiece of the Upper Town is the Piazza Vecchia, a clash of monumental styles – Romanesque, Renaissance, Neoclassical – that only Italians could render harmonious. Standing between the bell tower, the extraordinary marble library and the Palazzo della Ragione, a vast building that spans one side of the piazza, you feel the weight, but also the vivacity, of centuries.

l Proceed through the Palazzo’s arches to the Piazza del Duomo. The gobsmacker here is the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, put up as a bribe to the Virgin Mary. ‘Get us through this famine,’ they told her in the 12th century, ‘and we’ll build you a church.’ It worked, and the townspeople reacted with vigour over the following centuries. The austere original Romanesque structure gives way inside to explosion-in-a-paintbox Baroque. Frescoes vie for space with Flemish tapestries. Stucco covers every surface, and wood panels by Lorenzo Lotto embellish the choir. There’s so much going on that you could easily miss the tomb of local lad Gaetano Donizetti, opera composer extraordinaire.

l Remarkably, the volume is turned up more in the adjacent Cappella Colleoni (00 39 035 210061), mausoleum to Bartolomeo Colleoni, 15th-century mercenary leader in the service of Venice and Bergamo. From the marble facade to the overwrought interior, this is the sort of funerary chapel that, today, Kim Jong-il might design for himself.

l Now take in the views over the city from the Rocca, a fort and citadel, built, like the ramparts, to keep out the predatory Milanese. A short walk brings you to the Donizetti Museum (Via Arena 9; 00 39 035 399269, www.fondazione.bergamoestoria.it), dedicated to the prolific composer, who wrote 71 operas, 18 symphonies and dozens of other works. It took it out of him in the end. Or something did. He died in Bergamo in 1848, aged just 51, syphilitic and insane.

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