Cesare Mazzoni - the businessman who made San Pellegrino world famous

Entrepreneur turned local water into a global export

The original headquarters of the San Pellegrino
mineral water company, founded in 1899

Cesare Mazzoni, a Milanese lawyer who founded the company that produces the world-famous San Pellegrino mineral water, died on August 21, 1915 - 111 years ago today- in Milan.

The business Mazzoni started, in the small spa town of San Pellegrino Terme, manufactured 1.5 million bottles of the beneficial water during its first year of production in 1905 and went on to become a multimillion-pound operation.

The son of an English teacher, Mazzoni was born in Milan in 1862. He studied Law at the University of Pavia, a course from which he graduated with full marks. He then went to work for a railway company dealing with aspects of commercial law.

Mazzoni founded the Società Anonima delle Terme di San Pellegrino in 1899 and took over the running of the Hotel Terme and Fonte Palazzolo company, and the Hotel Milano and Fonte Salaroli company, after buying them from the local families who owned them.

Cesare Mazzoni studied law before becoming
a highly successful businessman 

He built new spa facilities and employed the architect Romolo Squadrelli to design and build a new water bottling plant in San Pellegrino, completed in what’s known in Italy as Stile Liberty - the Italian twist on Art Nouveau - between 1902 and 1904.

Within a few years of opening the plant, the 60 people who Mazzoni employed there were producing between four and five million bottles of the spa water annually to go on sale.

Mazzoni also founded the Val Brembana electric railway and joint stock company in 1904, which built the Bergamo to San Giovanni Bianco railway line, and he founded the Milanese Joint Stock Company for the Salami and Cheese industry of Milan in 1909.

He became president of many companies in Val Brembana and Val Camonica and was also an advisor to banks in the Bergamo area.

But Mazzoni was suddenly taken ill in August 1915 and he died on August 21 that same year, aged just 53. He was buried in the Cimitero Monumentale of Milan.

The municipality of San Pellegrino officially recognised Mazzoni as un ‘cittadino benemerito’,  a  ‘citizen of merit’, and in 1916 a street was named after him near the area where the thermal establishments were located.

The Liberty-style Grand Hotel and Casino of
San Pellegrino harks back to a golden age

The reputation of San Pellegrino water being good for people’s health dates back to medieval times and by the early years of the 19th century, many noble people would travel to the town to ‘take the water’ because it was believed to be beneficial.

Soon after the company was founded in 1899 by Mazzoni, bottles of San Pelegrino water began to be shipped overseas. With the opening of the thermal facilities at the beginning of the 20th century, San Pellegrino started to thrive as a high-class holiday resort, which attracted aristocrats from all over Europe.

Also designed by Squadrelli, the Liberty-style Grand Hotel and Casino of San Pellegrino were opened in 1906 and they soon became popular haunts for international royalty and politicians. Two Queens of Italy and other members of the Italian royal family visited, along with famous people such as opera composer Pietro Mascagni, army General Luigi Cadorna and film director Federico Fellini.

The San Pellegrino name
is known world-wide

As early as 1908, San Pellegrino water was being exported to Cairo, Calcutta, Shanghai, the US, Brazil, Peru and Australia.

The company was also the first to produce Aranciata, or orangeade, in the 1930s, and they went on to produce sparkling drinks in other fruit flavours.

In 2010, more than a billion bottles of San Pellegrino water and San Pellegrino fruit beverages were sold in a single year.

The spa town of San Pellegrino Terme is 24km (14 miles) north of the city of Bergamo and is a comune - municipality - of Bergamo province, located in the Val Brembana. The name San Pellegrino has now become synonymous with its celebrated bottled aqua minerale, but for centuries it has been a place people visited, hoping for a cure for their illnesses.

Leonardo da Vinci is reputedly one of the visitors who sampled San Pellegrino’s ‘miraculous waters’, which are believed to be particularly effective against uric acid crystals and kidney stones.

It is well worth a visit to see the opulent Liberty-style architecture and to take a stroll along the banks of the River Brembo, imagining what San Pellegrino must have been like at the height of its popularity when it was frequented by royalty and celebrities. Viale Cesare Mazzoni is situated near the Brembo river and the thermal establishments.

San Pellegrino S.p.a's modern headquarters are situated on Via Lodovico de' Medici in the Ruspino district of San Pellegrino Terme.

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Chiesa di San Leonardo

Church at the heart of the Città Bassa houses miracle fresco

Chiesa San Leonardo, in Largo
Niccolo Rezzara in the lower town

Chiesa San Leonardo is believed to be the oldest church in Bergamo’s lower town and can be found in the middle of all the shops and bars in Largo Niccolo Rezzara, which is close to Via XX Settembre, Bergamo’s main shopping street.

San Leonardo Church was originally built in the 11th century, although the present building dates back to the 14th century. Originally, it would have been part of a group of buildings that included a convent and a hospital.

Dedicated to San Leonardo, who is the patron saint of the sick and prisoners, the church has a simple interior with a single nave and there is a small chapel to the right of the altar containing a very old fresco.

The original structure of the church was damaged by fire in 1310 and had to be rebuilt. It was suppressed in 1797 when Bergamo came under the rule of Napoleon, but was reopened for worship at the beginning of the 19th century.

The church was renovated at the end of the last century. The façade was reconstructed and the portal, the two side windows, and the central circular window were put back in.

In recognition of San Leonardo being the protector of prisoners, the church became a centre for the organisation of food to be delivered to places of punishment.

In the presbytery of the church, works by Antonio Cifrondi dating back to the late 17th century can be seen.

San Leonardo's
central aisle

The small chapel to the right of the main altar contains a very old fresco of the Madonna that was suddenly discovered in the church by worshippers. There is a story that in 1613, the fresco of Mary, the mother of Jesus, miraculously appeared in the church in a niche where a statue of the Virgin had been placed. It is thought that it was actually a very old fresco that had been covered up by lime, but that the covering had gradually worn away, eventually revealing the fresco.

Local women cleaned the fresco with rags, but when this was communicated to the bishop, he thought it should be covered up again because it had been cleaned with unsuitable cloths that had deconsecrated it.

However, worshippers appealed to the Sacred Roman Congregation and in 1618 they ruled that the fresco should be rediscovered and it went on to become a devotional image for Bergamo people to worship.

See Best of Bergamo’s updated Flights Guide

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Chilling story that gave notoriety to village in Val Brembana

Mass murderer born 168 years ago still officially on the run

Simone Pianetti shot and killed
seven perceived enemies

Notorious murderer Simone Pianetti, who is regarded as a hero by some Italian and American anarchists, was born on 7 February 1858 in Camerata Cornello in the province of Bergamo.

In July 1914, Pianetti went out with his rifle one day and shot and killed seven people living in his local area who he believed had wronged him. He then went on the run and after firing at some Carabinieri officers who tried to arrest him, escaped into the mountains above Bergamo.

A search was carried out by more than 200 officers, from the Polizia di Stato, the Carabinieri and an infantry regiment, to try to capture him, but Pianetti managed to stay hidden in the mountains near the villages of Olmo al Brembo and Cassiglio.

Despite a 'Wanted' poster being published and circulated by the local Prefetto, offering a 5000 lire reward, Pianetti was never caught and his body was never found.

It is known that when he was young, Pianetti had fired his rifle at his father without injuring him, after an argument over a legacy. He was not charged with any offence as a result and, with the agreement of the local head of the Carabinieri, he left Italy and went to the USA.

Years later, he returned to Italy, his journey being paid for by his father, and he went back to live in Camerata Cornello, where he got married and fathered seven children.

He opened a small restaurant where customers were also allowed to dance, but because the local parish priest and other church officials did not approve of the dancing at his restaurant, he was eventually forced to close it by the municipal authorities.

A reward of 5,000 lire was offered
for help with the search for Pianetti

He then opened an electric powered mill, but this later also turned out to be an unsuccessful business venture because his reputation was blackened by his enemies and he lost all his money and became impoverished.

As the only person in the area who did not attend church, Pianetti steadily grew to believe that everyone hated him, which led to his murderous rampage in 1914.

On the morning of 13 July, Pianetti went out with his rifle and a list of the people who he believed had contributed towards his business failures and his poverty by either closing him down, or cheating him. His eventual victims were the local doctor, Domenico Morali, the manager of the municipality, Abramo Giudici, and his daughter, Valeria, Giovanni Ghilardi, a shoemaker, Stefano Filippo, a priest, Giovanni Giupponi, a layman, and Caterina Milesi, a farmer.

It is thought his actions in 1914 could have been inspired by those of Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian student, who had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the previous month, the famous killings that set off the events that led to the start of World War I.

Pianetti was known to have survived in hiding in the mountains for some time and it is not known, when, or where, he eventually died. It is thought it may have been in 1952 in Milan, but this has never been proved. There were also reported sightings of him in the Bergamo mountains, as well as in America and Venezuela.

Some of the local people began to see the fugitive Pianetti as a liberator, and wrote on walls, praising him, with slogans such as ‘Long Live Pianetti, we need one in every town’.

It is thought people helped him stay hidden from the authorities by giving him food. Some residents were later sentenced to terms of imprisonment for helping him.

The village of Camerata Cornello, where
Pianetti carried out his killing spree

In his absence, Pianetti was sentenced to life imprisonment, which was accompanied by a sentence of five years in continuous solitary confinement.

Many theories have been put forward about how he escaped justice. Some people claim to have met him years later in America, and there is a theory that in his old age he returned from there and lived with his son, Nino, in Milan, until he died in 1952.

In later years, Pianetti’s story came to be admired by some Italian and American anarchists because of the actions he took against what was perceived to be the bigotry of those in authority in Italy, in the religious establishment and the society of his time.

He is remembered in towns in the Brembana Valley as a sort of avenger, often referred to as a righter of wrongs, and a hero opposed to the people in authority. The “romantic” aspect of his story endures, leaving aside the tragic and criminal side, and the threat of “doing like Pianetti”, (in the Bergamo dialect fà de Pianetti) is sometimes used.

Pianetti’s death has never been recorded and the case against him has never been dropped, so he is now officially on the run aged 168.

His birthplace, Camerata Cornello, a comune of Bergamo, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the city, is one of the oldest villages in the Brembana Valley.

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Bergamo Capodanno 2026

Seeing in the New Year with fizz and bangs

Fireworks light up the sky
over Porta San Giacomo

Bergamo welcomed 2026 in typically civilised style with a sparkling fireworks display and plenty of bollicine (bubbles).

After dining either at home, or at restaurants in the Città Alta, local revellers and visitors were in a festive mood as they made their way down to the walls near Porta San Giacomo at midnight to watch the fuochi d’artificio being set off in the Città Bassa and many villages in the surrounding territory.

Everyone was in a happy mood and it was a comfortable environment for children and older people to be part of. Even though it was a convivial atmosphere, with many people bringing their choice of fizz with them, there was no need for a police presence.

Some of the foreign visitors enjoying the occasion might well have thought that they would not have felt quite so comfortable joining in with outdoor New Year celebrations in their own home cities and towns.

Un Buon Anno a tutti, di Best of Bergamo!

Editor’s note: "When I returned to my hotel, the Excelsior San Marco, with my own family party, we were immediately wished Buon Anno by the staff on the reception desk and handed a complimentary glass of Prosecco."

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