A MAGICAL PLACE

Bergamo’s beautiful upper town, the Città Alta (pictured above), is a magical place well worth visiting. Use this website to help you plan your trip to Bergamo in Northern Italy and find your way to some of the other lovely towns and villages in Lombardia that are perhaps less well known to tourists.

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Lorenzo Lotto’s legacy of art in Bergamo

Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto spent 12 of his most creative years living and working in Bergamo.
The entrance to church of San Bartolomeo

Many churches contain altar pieces and paintings of religious subjects produced by Lotto in the period between 1513 and 1525.
In the church of San Bartolomeo, which looks out over the Via Sentierone in the Città Bassa (lower town), there is a large altarpiece by Lotto depicting the Virgin Mary and child on a throne surrounded by saints.
The church of Santo Spirito in Piazza di Santo Spirito has an altarpiece by Lotto in one of the chapels featuring the Virgin Mary with child and saints.
And in the small church of San Bernardino in Via Pignolo there is also an altarpiece depicting the Virgin Mary with child and saints.
If you carry on walking up Via Pignolo towards the Città Alta (upper town) you will come to the area where Lotto lived during his time in Bergamo. His local church, San Michele al Pozzo Bianco (Saint Michael at the white well), is home to one of his most important works, Vita di Maria (history of Mary’s life), which decorates an entire chapel to the left of the altar.
The church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna in Via Sant’Alessandro houses Lotto’s Deposition from the Cross and Virgin Mary and Child.
Lorenzo Lotto did not receive widespread recognition for his brilliance until the middle of the last century but his works are now displayed in galleries in New York and Washington as well as the Uffizi in Florence and the Borghese gallery in Rome.
Born in Venice, Lotto worked in Treviso, Le Marche and Rome before going to live in Bergamo.
He returned to live in Venice in 1525 where he concentrated mainly on painting portraits but by 1544 he had become elderly and poor. He went to live in Loreto, where he lived by painting canvases for the Basilica until he died in 1556.
It is thought that the happiest and most creative period of Lotto’s life was spent in Bergamo and his legacy is that some of his best works are accessible in the churches to be viewed free of charge by visitors.

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