Random Impressions of Bergamo

A few random impressions of Bergamo:

- Sometimes a scene, except for the language and the size of the cars, could have been transplanted directly from Connecticut Avenue.  I’m thinking of a group of four or five women doing an exercise walk.  We passed each other on several mornings when I was going to my Italian lesson.  They had the same combination of windbreaker and warm up pants you’d see on a similar group in Washington, including, in a couple of case, the North Face logo.  Walking at a brisk pace and talking, they could have been headed for a Starbucks.

-There appears to be money in Bergamo.  I judge this by the number of expensive cars I see.  Of course most of the cars are small Fiats, Citroens, Smart Cars, Renaults, and such.  But the streets also include Maseratis, Porches, BMWs, Audis, and, surprisingly, station wagon-sized Jeeps.

- I’m in the Legami bookstore one day.  I notice that the store's background music is some nice jazz.  Then an announcer says, in un-accented English, that we’ve been listening to Mose Allison.  Are the people in the store -- the clerks and customers -- listening?  Or is it just pleasant background?

- People seem to smoke more than in France, especially young women.  But then I dig up some WHO data from 2008.  According to their report, Italians, in fact, smoke less than do the French.  And it’s particularly surprising that more U.S. women smoke than do Italian women.  So much for that impression.

                 Men        Women
Italy          33            19
France      37            27
U.S.           26            22

- Stores in Bergamo don’t even wait for Thanksgiving to start putting up Christmas decorations.

Caffè del Tasso

I went for coffee this morning with my Italian teacher and two of her colleagues at the University of Bergamo.  The university has locations scattered in several parts of the city, but the main part is in one of the narrow back streets of the medieval Città Alta.  We met them at their offices there.  It’s always a bit of a surprise when I come up to a building that may be several hundred years old, walk through the doorway, and emerge in the present.
 
My teacher is part of the Centro di Italiano per Stranieri at the university.  The Center provides Italian classes for foreign students, as well as others, like me, interested in learning the language.  We were getting together because I’d expressed an interest in finding out more about Center programs.  We walked from their offices a short ways to the Caffe del Tasso in the Piazza Vecchia.  I remembered that Lynda and I had had a glass of wine here when we visited Bergamo six years ago.

According to its own history, the Caffe, in one form or another, dates back to 1476 when it was known as the Locanda delle due Spade (the Inn of Two Swords).  Later, in 1681, after a statute honoring the poet Torquato Tasso was installed nearby, it became known as the Torquato Tasso Caffè e Bottiglieria (Torquato Tasso Caffe and Wine Shop).  Tasso was a 16th century poet best known for the epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) dealing with the First Crusade.  He was born in Sorrento, near Naples, but Tasso’s father was from Bergamo, which, it seems, was enough for the city to claim him as one of their own.  Eventually, sometime in the late 19th century, the Caffè's name was shortened to what it is today.

The place is modestly wide with the wine and coffee bar at the front and more tables towards the back.  This morning there was good light from the front window and the wooden floors and fixtures gave a comfortable old feeling; not 500+ years, but at least 19th century old.  Three of us had coffee and one had an orange juice.  And we talked about the Center.  I’m hoping to go back.  If it weren’t a bit far away on foot, I could become one of the regulars.

Restoring Sant'Agata

About 5 p.m. yesterday, I took a break from my Italian homework and went for a walk along the south wall of the Città Alta.  I had taken along my camera, but by the time I got up to the walls, the sun was behind the horizon and the only thing that seemed to suggest itself was a group of trees at the top of a part of the wall profiled against what light was left in the sky.  Here’s the picture.

By the time I made it around to the Porta Sant’Alessandro Gate at the west end of the walls, it was completely dark and time to turn into the Città Alta itself and head home.  But I wasn’t in a real hurry and, walking along the Via Colleoni, I stopped in at the Church of Sant’Agata al Carmine.  There wasn’t anything particular to suggest it, but churches always seem to be open and I thought why not.  It turned out to be a mini-lesson in the burdens of maintaining a cultural heritage.

It’s a good-sized baroque church with elaborately decorated chapels and side walls.  The very nice paintings along the arched ceiling showed scenes from Jesus’ life from the Annunciation to the time when he was learning his trade as a carpenter.  Interesting the choice to go only that far.  Although the colors still appeared strong, the ceiling and the paintings were not in good shape.  Several sections showed a white, chalky-looking substance on the surface; possibly damage from water leaking through the roof?

At that point, I gave more attention to a large display panel at the back of the pews, just as you came in the door.  It was an appeal for funds.  The panel explained that the church had been neglected and is now being restored.  It explained that the first phase, already completed, consisted of securing the foundation and walls and installing a modern electrical system.  The cost for this was 328,545 euros, with funds coming from the Italian Episcopal Commission, the Lombardy Region, and HCB, a hotel and entertainment booking company.  The next phase will fix the roof, restore one of the side chapels, and address delayed maintenance.  This is expected to cost 421,444 euros.  So far half of the funds have been pledged by the Cariplo Foundation (related to the Cariplo Bank based in Lombardy); the rest still needs to be raised.

A second, somewhat larger panel on the exit side of the church represented part of the project to raise those funds.  The broad panel, maybe six feet high by nine feet across was a composite of several large color photographs showing the apse and sides of the church.  Over the photos was a lucite cover cover with perhaps several hundred small, rectangular cutouts about two by three inches.  A text explained that contributors to the church’s restoration can buy one (or more) “brick’s” to fill in the empty rectangles.  The minimum contribution is five euros.  As the blanks are filled in the pictures are completed -- and the church is restored.  Yesterday, it seemed that contributors had bought about sixty percent of the bricks.

All this made me think that people responsible for maintaining or restoring baroque churches like this one must curse the original builders and especially the artists who added all the decoration; or maybe more appropriately the patrons who commissioned it.  I wonder if they envy those responsible for gothic churches?

Via Pignolo Basso

I’ve been walking up and down via Pignolo on the way to the Pam grocery store on the via Camozzi; it’s about a 10 minute walk.  The first part, from my apartment down to via Verdi, is mostly a descent on a narrow sidewalk along a herringbone-patterned brick street flanked by forbidding exteriors to what seem to be old, old palazzi.

I’d been seeing the portion below via Verdi mostly as an extension of this, more closed-off palazzi with occasional glimpses of interior courtyards.  But yesterday afternoon I stopped in at a cartoleria (stationary and school supplies store) in the the lower street to buy some postcards.  The store was wonderful.  When I went in, I felt like I’d stepped back 50 or 60 years.  It could have been next door to my grandfather’s Woolworths in Normal, Illinois.    The couple in the store, several years older even that I am, added to the atmosphere.  I wouldn’t say it was museum-like, but I wished I could have spent more time exploring what all they had for sale.

When I went back outside, somehow an ice had been broken.  Going back up the street towards my apartment, passing the small shops, I was struck by a variety I hadn’t noticed before.  As is probably true in any neighborhood here, the street includes several bars (Italian style, probably serving more coffee and snacks than alcohol) and beauty salons.  But it also includes Antica Legatoria, selling hand-made notebooks and providing book-binding services; Bag and Shoes, whose name describes it; Ready to Win, offering model airplane, car, etc. kits; Studio Matteo Pontiggia for guitar repair; Il Negozio, a shop selling arts and crafts to raise funds for autism support; Tip Tap, a children's shoe store, and one of the busier stores in the street.  Plus a couple of women’s clothing stores, a shoe repair and key duplicating store, a real estate office, a branch of the Bergamo library system, and more. In all, evidence of a real neighborhood.

This was reinforced by the number of fathers and mothers with small children, walking or on bicycles.  It’s hard to know what’s behind the blank building facades, but it must be that many include apartments with young families.
 
As I say, quite different from my initial impression.

Bergamo photos

It's past time to put up a post.  My Italian lessons have been keeping me busy and I keep finding that the time when I might write something gets used differently.  There's grocery shopping, exploring the Città Alta (Upper City), finding my way around Bergamo proper, and enjoying dinners with the Terzis and their friends.  That has been one of the really special things about this stay.

Anyway, I've been taking pictures here and there, nothing like the number I did during the Umbria photo workshop, but some to record the world seen from my apartment and a little of what I've seen as I've walked around.  So this post, and maybe more, will focus on photographs.

This was the view from my apartment window looking northeast.  The first week I was here, it rained and the temperatures dropped to the low to mid-30s. 

 The next morning when the sun came up, the mountains had what people were saying was the earliest snowfall in the mountains that they could remember.

 A few days later, we finally had sunshine.

 My apartment, the vantage point for the pictures above, is that box on the roof just in front of the bell tower on the church of Sant'Allesandro della Croce, the patron saint of Bergamo.  The pictures were taken from from the left side.  Fortunately, the last bells are at 9 p.m., I think; and they wait until 7 a.m. to restart.  This photo was taken from the wall surrounding the Città Alta, the oldest part of Bergamo.  The street layout in the Città Alta still shows the influence of the original Roman settlers and many of the major buildings -- churches and public buildings -- were built in the medieval and renaissance periods.

 All the rain has made bike rides difficult, but I finally got out last Wednesday afternoon.  I set off without having any particular route; I was riding into the Brembana Valley and hoped, after braving busy roads for a few kilometers, I might be rewarded with some small, lightly-traveled mountain roads.  Not quite.  I made it up to Zogno, here, about 15 km north of Bergamo.  I did manage to find some quiet side roads above the main road running along the river, but not enough of them.  I've now talked to a couple of avid riders who live in the area and know the climbs, so I'm hoping for something better next time out.