Explorer Bergame

The Città Alta funicular links Bergamo's lower town with the walled upper town. Opened in 1887, it climbs 85 m on a track about 240 m long with a maximum gradient of 52%, in a ride of about two minutes. The upper station opens onto Piazza Mercato delle Scarpe, where a second funicular continues to San Vigilio.

Palazzo Moroni is a 17th-century palace on Via Porta Dipinta in Bergamo's upper town, built in the mid-17th century for Francesco Moroni. Its rooms keep Baroque frescoes by Gian Giacomo Barbelli and portraits by Giovan Battista Moroni. Behind it lie terraced Italian gardens and an ortaglia of almost two hectares. The FAI has run it since 2019.

Bergamo Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Alexander, the city's patron, stands on Piazza Duomo in the upper town beside Santa Maria Maggiore. Rebuilt from the mid-15th century on the site of an older cathedral, it was refurbished to designs by Carlo Fontana in 1689 and received its Neoclassical façade in 1889. Inside are paintings by Tiepolo, Moroni and Previtali.

The Accademia Carrara is an art gallery in Bergamo founded around 1780 by the collector Giacomo Carrara, in a Neoclassical building remodelled by Simone Elia in 1808–1813. Its collection covers Italian painting from the 15th to the 19th century, with works by Pisanello, Giovanni Bellini, Botticelli, Raphael, Lorenzo Lotto and Giovan Battista Moroni.

The Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore is a Romanesque church in Bergamo's upper town, founded in 1137 and completed over the following centuries. Its porches are by Giovanni da Campione; the interior, redecorated in the 17th century, holds the wooden choir with intarsia panels designed by Lorenzo Lotto and the tomb of the composer Gaetano Donizetti.

The Colleoni Chapel is a Renaissance funerary chapel in Bergamo's upper town, built in 1472–1476 to designs by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo for the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni, beside Santa Maria Maggiore. Its façade is faced in coloured marble around a rose window; inside are the tombs of Colleoni and his daughter Medea and ceiling frescoes by Tiepolo.

The Visconti Citadel is a fortified complex in the western part of Bergamo's upper town, begun in 1355 by Bernabò Visconti. Under Venetian rule it lost its military role and was sold off in lots; restorations from 1958 recovered towers, the arcaded portico and 14th-century frescoes. Its buildings now house the city's archaeological and natural science museums.