Enea Salmeggia – painter

Bergamo artist left treasure trove of pictures to remember him by

Enea Salmeggia's Il Martirio di Sant'Alessandro
hangs behind the altar of Sant'Alessandro in Colonna

Enea Salmeggia, who was active during the late Renaissance period and left behind a rich legacy of paintings in Lombardy, died on 25 February 1626 in Bergamo.

Salmeggia, also known as Il Talpino, or Salmezza, spent time in Rome as a young man, where he studied the works of Raphael. His style has often been likened to that of Raphael and he has even been dubbed the ‘Bergamo Raphael’ by some art enthusiasts. A drawing in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, of two figures seated along with some architectural studies, was previously attributed to Raphael, but has now been ascribed to Enea Salmeggia.

The artist was born at Salmezza, a frazione of Nembro, a comune in the province of Bergamo, between 1565 and 1570. It is known that Salmeggia grew up in Borgo San Leonardo in Bergamo, where his father, Antonio, was a tailor.

He learnt the art of painting from other Bergamo painters and is also believed to have studied under the Bergamo artist Simone Peterzano in Milan. Caravaggio was one of Peterzano’s most famous pupils and it has been suggested that Salmeggia could have been studying with Peterzano at about the same time as Caravaggio.

Salmeggia's Portrait of a Gentleman
can be seen at Accademia Carrara

Salmeggia was so young when he received his first commission to paint an Adoration of the Magi for the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo that his father had to sign the acceptance document on his behalf.

The artist married Vittoria Daverio, the sister of Milanese sculptor Pietro Antonio Daverio, and they had six children. Two of their children died from the plague and one went into a monastery, but his daughters, Chiara and Elisabetta, and his son, Francesco, helped in his workshop near the Church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna in Via Sant’Alessandro, and they later became painters themselves.

One of Salmeggia’s most famous works, Il Martirio di Sant’Alessandro, an oil on canvas, completed in 1623, can still be seen behind the altar in the Church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna.

The Church has a Roman column in front of it, which is believed to mark the exact spot where Bergamo’s patron saint, Sant’Alessandro was martyred by the Romans in 303 for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. Every year, on 26 August, the Festa di Sant’Alessandro, Bergamo people commemorates Sant’Alessandro’s decapitation there.

After Salmeggia died in Bergamo in 1626 he was buried in the Church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna.

There are paintings by Salmeggia in the churches of Sant’Andrea and Santi Bartolomeo e Stefano in Bergamo and the Accademia Carrara, a prestigious art gallery in Bergamo, also has works by Salmeggia, including his Portrait of a Gentleman. Further afield, there are paintings by Salmeggia in Brescia, Lodi and Milan.

In Nembro, the suburb where Salmeggia was born, the Church of San Martino has no fewer than 27 of his paintings for visitors to admire.

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Visit Bergamo’s Civic Archaeology Museum

Civico Museo Archeologico di Bergamo

The museum is housed in a 14th century
palace in Piazza della Cittadella

You can travel in the footsteps of the Celts, Romans and Longobards who built Bergamo by visiting the Civic Archaeology Museum to see the wealth of artefacts that have been uncovered over the centuries in the city and the surrounding area.

Items dating back to the Neolithic period in prehistoric times reveal Bergamo’s ancient origins. Stone axes, iron swords, Celtic bronze ornaments and Longobard gold crosses are among the items on display in the museum. Bergamo’s Roman period is particularly well represented with a wealth of sculptures, inscriptions, tomb stones and funerary items.

The Civic Archaeology Museum is now housed in a 14th century palace in Piazza della Cittadella in the Città Alta, but its collection dates back as far as 1561, when Bergamo’s Great Council established ‘a collection of antiquities’ for people to view in the loggia under Palazzo della Ragione in Piazza Vecchia in the Città Alta.

The original display of artefacts has increased hugely over the centuries thanks to the many valuable items that have been unearthed locally and donated to the collection and the museum has had to move to many different locations in the city as it kept requiring more space.

The museum has collections of artefacts from
many periods of history unearthed locally

A special publication registering the most notable archaeological discoveries in the care of the museum was published in 1900 by Professor Gaetano Mantovani. All the important finds were gathered together in the 1930s and given a home in the Rocca fortress, where they were kept safe during World War II.

The collection was moved in 1960 to its present location, where it now occupies the ground floor of a palace built in the 14th century by the Visconti family. Milan’s ancient rulers, in Piazza Cittadella.

There are rooms displaying prehistoric, bronze age, Iron age, gallic and Longobard items. There is plenty of evidence from the Roman period in Bergamo, with an important collection of funerary epigraphs from the area. There are rooms devoted to the city’s history from the early urban settlement of the fifth century BC to the Roman city becoming a municipium in the age of Caesar- Augustus. Artefacts from the Longobard duchy in the early Middle Ages include fascinating examples of the pieces of armour worn by soldiers at the time.

The museum is open between October and December from 9.00 to 13.00 and 14.00 to 17.00 Thursday and Friday and from 10.00 to 13.00 and 14.00 to 17.30 on Saturday and Sunday.

The entrance ticket is three euros and the ticket is also valid for entry to the Natural Science Museum, also in Piazza della Cittadella. 

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Bergamo curiosities, clocks and curfews

Look out for some of the quaint architectural features of the Città Alta

A set of stone gargoyles on the wall above
Palazzo della Ragione's covered staircase

Bergamo’s upper town, the Città Alta, is full of medieval buildings, towers and houses and many of them have unusual, quaint architectural features, so it’s worth taking your time when you are walking round to see what you can spot.

The faded frescoes you will see are indications that the outsides of buildings would have been much more colourful hundreds of years ago than they are today. But it is worth looking at the frescoes to try to see what the artist painted. If there is a portion missing, let your imagination fill it in so that you can understand what it would have been like in its heyday. Good places for fresco spotting are Piazza Mascheroni, Piazza Cittadella and Via Porta Dipinta.

There are grotesque stone carvings on many of the medieval buildings in the Città Alta that would have meant something to the stone mason responsible for adding them hundreds of years ago.

The bells in the Campanone still
chime at 10pm each night

Of particular interest are the set of stone gargoyles on the wall to your right as you start to climb the 16th century covered staircase that leads to the first floor of Palazzo della Ragione, known as the Hall of the Capriate. These were taken centuries ago from a funeral monument in the former convent of San Francesco.

The paved area at ground floor level can be accessed from both sides through the porticos. It is usually empty these days but in the past has been used as an open civil and criminal court, where the prisoner had to sit on a white stone seat, and also as a place for people to watch puppet shows. These were popular with adults as well as children because they enjoyed the clever lampooning of local dignitaries and political situations of the day by the puppeteers.

Inside the porticos under Palazzo della Ragione, if you look at the paving, you will see white marble slabs among the grey with engraved ellipses. This is a sundial, or solar clock, designed by Giovanni Albrici in 1798, which points north and indicates the passage of the sun through the meridian, at 12 noon.

The Meridiana Monumentale sundial
is a particular curiosity

Like most things in Bergamo it has been well preserved. In 1982 restoration work was carried out on it and the mechanism was modified to enable the date to be shown as well.

When the sun shines, as it often does in Bergamo, it passes through a small hole in a metal plate attached to one of the arches and as it shines into the porticoes you can see what time it is.

The enormous Campanone (big bell tower) on the other side of the piazza also helps visitors to Bergamo to tell the time. It comes into its own at 10pm every evening when it chimes more than 100 times to remind people still outside the Città Alta of the curfew and give them chance to get back through one of the gates, or otherwise be locked out for the night.

They don’t lock the gates of the Città Alta any more, but have maintained the tradition of sounding more than 100 chimes at 10pm.

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Enrico Caffi Natural Sciences Museum

Bergamo takes pride in museum’s amazing collection

Bergamo is well known for its art treasures and musical heritage but perhaps not widely recognised as a centre for science.

The Museo Civico Scienze Naturali Enrico
Caffi is in Piazza Cittadella

However, in the historic upper town, the Città Alta, there is a prestigious natural history museum with thousands of fascinating artefacts for visitors to see.

The Museo Civico Scienze Naturali Enrico Caffi (The Civic Museum of Natural Sciences Enrico Caffi) is in Piazza Cittadella, a square close to Colle Aperto and Porta Sant’Alessandro.

A reproduction of a huge mammoth greets customers in the entrance hall. Inside the museum, exhibits are divided into the categories of zoology, entomology, geology and palaeontology.

There are examples of all five classes of vertebrates, along with a collection of anthropods.

The museum’s origins date back to the end of the 19th century when exhibitions were held during public holidays of the artefacts from the Royal Technical Institute Vittorio Emanuele II.

Dottore Enrico Caffi was the
museum's first director

In 1918, the museum moved to Piazza Vecchia in the Città Alta and in 1920, Dottore Enrico Caffi was appointed as the first director of the museum and organised the cataloguing of all items in the museum’s collection. Caffi was an expert on the Parco delle Orobie outside Bergamo and devoted his time to studying the flora and fauna. He left a large quantity of manuscripts with scientific articles about his findings and maps of the territory.

Under successive professors the museum was expanded and studies were made of Lago Endine and the Brembo and Serio rivers.

In 1969, the museum moved to its present headquarters in Piazza Cittadella. Four years later, a fossil of the oldest known flying creature was found in Seriana valley. The creature, who lived more than two million years ago, was described for the very first time by Rocco Zambelli, who was responsible for the paleontology section of the museum.

The museum now has laboratories for educational purposes and a sensory path with Braille captions for blind visitors.

In normal times the Natural Sciences Museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday, but it has temporarily closed due to Covid 19. Visit www.museoscienzebergamo.it for more information.

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Church of Sant’Agostino Bergamo

A gem of Gothic architecture, the beautiful Church of Sant’Agostino, lies close to Porta Sant’Agostino, the gate marking the eastern entrance to the Città Alta.

The Gothic facade of the church of Sant'Agostino

The de- consecrated church was originally part of a monastery complex but is now used as a lecture theatre by Bergamo’s University and is also a venue for art exhibitions and events.

The sandstone church was built in Gothic style by the Eremitani Friars in 1290 and then passed to the Observant Friars in 1407, both belonging to the Sant’Agostino order.

By the 17th century the monastery complex had become an important centre for religious and cultural research.

Above the central rose window there is a marble statue of Sant’Agostino in a niche.

Inside, you can still see the medieval frescoed walls and original wooden ceiling beams.

It is believed the monastery complex once sheltered Martin Luther, who stayed there for one night on his way to Rome on the eve of his excommunication.

The open area in front of the church was once used as a defensive bastion for the city but is now the Fara park, a green space where sport is played and tired tourists can sit and relax.

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Palazzo della Ragione Bergamo

Medieval palace was once used as a courthouse

The facade of the 12th century Palazzo della Ragione is an iconic image of Bergamo’s upper town, the Città Alta. 

But the most photographed and admired building in Piazza Vecchia hides many fascinating secrets.

If you step under the archways into what was once the ground floor of the building, you are entering what used to be Bergamo’s courthouse.

The white seat was where the prisoner would have to sit

During the period of Venetian domination the judges used to preside over legal proceedings there and would take a decision based on their ‘reason’, in Italian ‘ragione’. This is how the medieval palace acquired its name.

You will see a row of stone seats along one of the palace’s walls but only one of the seats is white. This is the so called ‘Seat of Shame’ where the prisoner accused of the crime would have had to sit during the legal arguments.

Take a seat there yourself and imagine what it would have been like to be someone accused of a crime in the 16th century when the Venetians first took control of Bergamo. The defendant would have been very glad to be able to stand up and walk into Piazza Duomo and continue sightseeing, as today’s visitors can!

The palace has been damaged by fires over the centuries and has had to be rebuilt many times.  It is said that the ground floor walls were removed to allow a view through the arches into Piazza Duomo. This enables visitors to see the stunning pink and white facade of the Colleoni Chapel, which is in stark contrast to the dark stone of Palazzo della Ragione. 

The facade of the medieval Palazzo della Ragione

The grand covered stairway, which dates from 1453, rises from Piazza Vecchia to the first floor of the palace. There are 13th and 14th century frescoes, which were taken from old churches and houses in the area, decorating the upper hall.

The palace was mentioned in a document of 1198 and is therefore believed to be the oldest communal building in Italy.  It was once used for meetings of Bergamo’s civic authority, but it has also been a theatre and a library and occasionally acted as an art gallery.

The carving of the lion over the central window of the palace was added to the exterior of the building to mark the domination of the Venetians over Bergamo. The current lion is actually a 20th century replica of the 15th century original, which was torn down when the French took control of Bergamo in 1797.

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Porch of Santa Maria Maggiore Bergamo

Statue of Sant’Alessandro stands above Basilica entrance 

One of the most important and beautiful churches in Bergamo, the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza Duomo in the Città Alta, has so many fascinating architectural details that it is impossible to take them all in on your first visit.

The Basilica was built in the 12th century in the shape of a Greek cross but was modified in the 14th and 16th centuries.

The loggia above the entrance to the Basilica

The Basilica’s sacristry was demolished in the 15th century to make way for the Colleoni Chapel, which was built on the orders of Bergamo’s famous condottiero, Bartolomeo Colleoni, to house his own tomb.

The Colleoni Chapel, which stands next to Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza Duomo, was designed by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo to harmonise with the architecture of the Basilica and it has come to be acknowledged as one of the finest Renaissance buildings in Italy.

But the porch to the left of the Colleoni Chapel, one of two entrances to the Basilica, is just as architecturally beautiful and can certainly hold its own with the Colleoni Chapel.

The entrance to Santa Maria Maggiore from Piazza Duomo was built by the architect Giovanni di Campione between 1351 and 1353. Above the archway there is a loggia with three arched niches containing statues. The Saints Barnaba and Proitettizio stand on either side of a statue of Bergamo’s patron saint, Sant’Alessandro, who is on horseback. You have to look up before you ascend the steps to the Basilica or you will miss it.

Every year on 26 August Bergamo commemorates the date in 303 that Sant’Alessandro was martyred by the Romans for refusing to renounce his Christian faith.

The porch is next to the Renaissance gem,
 the Colleoni Chapel

It is believed Alessandro was a devout citizen who had continued to preach Christianity in Bergamo, despite several narrow escapes from the Romans, but that he was eventually caught and suffered decapitation.

A series of religious, cultural and gastronomic events take place in his name over several days at the end of August throughout the city, which is decorated with festive lights.

Porta Sant’Alessandro, the gate which leads from the Città Alta to Borgo Canale and San Vigilio, was built in the 16th century as part of a massive project to protect the historic upper town with defensive walls. 

It was named after a fourth century cathedral that had originally been dedicated to the saint, but was later demolished by the occupying Venetian forces who were overseeing the rebuilding of the walls.

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Bergamo’s Mint

Old palace was where the city's coins were made

The strong wall of Palazzo Pacchiani Rivola

An unassuming old palace in Via Donizetti in the Città Alta used to house Bergamo’s Mint.

Palazzo Pachiani Rivola, at one time known as Palazzo Gromo dei Rivola, is at number 18 in the beautiful street named after the opera composer, Gaetano Donizetti. It has particularly strong walls and parts of it date back to the 13th century.

During what is known as the communal period, between the 11th and 14th centuries, when the citizens of Bergamo ruled themselves, the Mint of Bergamo, la zecca, was based in the palace.

The family who owned Palazzo Pachiani Rivola at that time, the Belfante di Rivola family, were believed to have received a good rent for housing the Mint.

The Rivola were one of the oldest and most powerful families in Bergamo . They were Guelphs and were involved in continual battles with the Suardi family, who were Ghibellines.

The only access to the house was along a small path named Gromo dei Rivola. This made the house so secure that the gold and silver from nearby mines were kept there after being brought to the city from the valleys. It is known that coins were minted in the palace by 1236, if not earlier.

The top of the street named
 after opera composer Donizetti

It has also been recorded that in 1254 a meeting was held in the Palazzo del Comune to agree regulations for Bergamo’s monetary system

A plaque on the wall of Palazzo Pachiani Rivola states that silver money was made on behalf of the Rivola family in the palace between 1236 and 1302.

Via Donizetti leads from Piazza Mercato delle Scarpe to Piazza Giuliani.

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Porta San Lorenzo or Porta Garibaldi

Porta San Lorenzo is sometimes known as Porta Garibaldi

The oldest and smallest of the gates leading into the Città Alta is Porta San Lorenzo, which leads into the upper city from Via Maironi to the north.

Confusingly, it is also sometimes referred to as Porta Garibaldi, as it was the entrance Giuseppe Garibaldi led his volunteer army through in June 1859 when he entered Bergamo and freed it from Austrian domination.

Porta San Lorenzo used to be the passageway to enter the city for people from the valleys north of Bergamo and from countries beyond the Alps.

Its ancient name comes from the church that used to be there, which was demolished by the Venetian invaders in order to build the walls.

Its second name, Porta Garibaldi, is to recognise the special connection Italy’s military leader had with Bergamo. Garibaldi played a key role in the process of Italian unification and, when he led the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, some of the soldiers came from Bergamo.

As a reference to this expedition, Bergamo is also called Città dei Mille, the City of the Thousand.

Porta San Lorenzo had to be closed between 1605 and 1627 in order to keep the city safe. It was hard to keep the gate under enough surveillance to prevent an ambush.

The travellers from the valleys, who used to come into Bergamo through this gate, protested to the authorities until it was reopened.

But like the other three gates into the Città Alta, Porta San Lorenzo was always closed at 10 pm, when the bells would ring to signal the beginning of the curfew, which was imposed to guarantee the safety of the city.

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Giacomo Manzù and his famous gift to Bergamo

The Monument to the Partisan by Giacomo
Manzù can be found in Piazza Matteotti

The acclaimed Bergamo sculptor Giacomo Manzù was born Giacomo Manzoni on this day in 1908. 

One of Manzù's most notable works, his Monument to the Partisan, can be found in Piazza Matteotti in the Città Bassa, a short distance from Porta Nuova.

The 3.2m (10ft 6ins) bronze sculpture shows a young anti-Fascist partisan fighter hanging upside down by his feet, having supposedly been tortured to death by Italian Fascists or Nazi soldiers.  Alongside him stands a young woman looking on in sadness.

On the reverse is a poem written by Manzù, dedicated to the partisan.

Manzù presented the work to his home city on its completion and it was unveiled on April 25, 1977.

The son of a shoemaker, Angelo Manzoni, who was also sacristan of the parish church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna, Manzù taught himself to be a sculptor, helped only by a few evening classes in art, and went on to achieve international recognition.

He changed his name to Manzù and started working in wood while he was doing his military service in the Veneto in 1928.

After moving to Milan, he was commissioned by the architect, Giovanni Muzio, to decorate the Chapel of the Sacred Heart Catholic University.

But he achieved national recognition after he exhibited a series of busts at the Triennale di Milano.  The following year he held a personal exhibition with the painter, Aligi Sassu, with whom he shared a studio.

Sculptor Giacomo Manzù was the son
of a Bergamo shoemaker

His 1939 series of bronze bas reliefs about the death of Christ were criticised by the Fascist government when they were exhibited in Rome in 1942.  They were interpreted by some as a symbolisation of violence committed by the Fascist regime against their opponents and Manzù, who was a communist, went into hiding for a while for fear of being arrested.

Manzù had started teaching at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, but during the war he went back north to live in Clusone, to the north of Bergamo, in Val Seriana. He returned to teach in Milan at the end of the war.

Manzù then moved to Salzburg, where he met his wife, Inge Schabel, who became the model for several of his sculptures.

He built an 11-foot high sculpture, Passo di Danza, in Detroit and his last great work was a six-metre tall sculpture of a woman with a child outside the United Nations headquarters in New York in 1989.

During his long career he also built stage sets for the composer Igor Stravinsky and he eventually designed his tomb in Venice.

A devout Catholic, Manzù was a personal friend of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who would go on to be Pope John XXIII and who was also from Bergamo, and he completed some important commissions for the Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica.

Pio Manzù, Giacomo's son, who died tragically young in 1969

More examples of his work in the Città Bassa in Bergamo can be found inside the entrance portico of the Palazzo della Provincia in Via Torquato Tasso, and at the Museum of Contemporary and Modern Art (GAMeC) in Via SanTomaso, opposite the Accademia Carrara museum.

While in Rome he lived in Ardea, south of the capital and close to the sea, in a locality that has since been renamed Colle Manzù un his honour.  Ardea has a museum dedicated to his work.

Manzù died in Rome in 1991, The New York Times described him in an obituary as ‘one of Italy’s leading sculptors whose work often mixed religious, allegorical and sexual imagery’.

Sadly, he outlived his son, Pio, by 22 years.  Pio, who was also born in Bergamo, was a successful designer whose work in the automobile industry yielded the groundbreaking Fiat 127, the "people's car" of Italy in the 1970s.  His death at the age of just 30 in a road accident in 1969, however, meant he did not live to see the project completed.

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On this day in 1467: Bartolomeo Colleoni led his troops in the Battle of Molinella

The first time artillery played a major part in warfare

A portrait of Bartolomeo Colleoni

Bergamo’s famous condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni led his troops into battle on this day in 1467 at Molinella near Bologna.

On his side were infantry and cavalry representing Venice and on the other side there was an army serving Florence.

The occasion is now regarded as one of the most important events in Italian history as it was the first time artillery and firearms had been used extensively during a battle in Italy. Cannons with barrels up to 12 feet long would fire balls of metal or stone.

Leading the 14,000 soldiers fighting for Venice, Colleoni was working jointly with Ercole I d’Este from Ferrara and noblemen from Pesaro and Forlì.

Against Colleoni, another condottiero, Federico da Montefeltro, led an army of 13,000 soldiers serving Florence in an alliance with Galeazzo Maria Sforza, ruler of the Duchy of Milan, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Giovanni II Bentivoglio, the ruler of Bologna.

Condottieri were essentially mercenaries, experienced military leaders who could be hired by Italy's city-states to organise and lead armies on their behalf.

The fighting took place between the villages of Riccardina and Molinella in Emilia-Romagna and the event is also sometimes referred to as the Battle of Riccardina.

It is not certain which side won, but as a result Colleoni abandoned his plans to conquer Milan. There were hundreds of casualties and a large number of horses were killed.

The following year Pope Paul II managed to broker a peace between the two sides.

Frescoes at Colleoni's Malpaga Castle show scenes
from the Battle of Molinella

Bartolomeo Colleoni spent the last years of his life living with his family at his castle in Malpaga to the south of Bergamo, which has frescoes depicting scenes from the Battle of Molinella that have been attributed to the painter Il Romanino.

The castle is open to the public at weekends between March and November.

As you walk round Bergamo you will see a chapel, a street, a bar and a restaurant named after Colleoni, who was a respected military leader who spent most of his life in the pay of the republic of Venice defending Bergamo against invaders.

He is remembered as one of the most honourable condottieri of his era, carrying out charitable works and agricultural improvements in Bergamo and the surrounding area when he was not involved in a military campaign.

He left money to Venice, with a request that an equestrian statue of himself be erected in Piazza San Marco. The statue was made by Andrea del Verrocchio, but as there was a rule that no monument was allowed in the main piazza, it was placed opposite the Scuola di San Marco in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo.

Towards the end of his life, Colleoni turned his attention to designing a building to house his own tomb in the Città Alta (upper town), which was to give Bergamo its most ornate and celebrated building, the Cappella Colleoni (Colleoni Chapel).

The Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo

He commissioned the architect Antonio Amadeo to design an impressive chapel, where he could be buried with all the insignia of a captain of the Venetian republic, and the sacristy of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza Duomo had to be demolished to make way for this.

Amadeo designed the Cappella Colleoni to harmonise with Santa Maria Maggiore using pink and white marble to match the colours of the doorway of the basilica.

Inside the chapel he designed an elaborate two tier sarcophagus surmounted by a golden statue of Colleoni on horseback.

Colleoni died on 2 November, 1475 and his body was placed in the lower sarcophagus following his own instructions, where it still lies today.

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