Day One – Step into Another Century
For a long time, I considered this city merely a stopover on the way to Milan, even though flights here are cheap and arrival and departure times can be adjusted almost to your taste. My personal tachometer led me here when I needed to clear my head, breathe different air, and see different faces and hear a different language. And so here I am. The first step is like opening a door to another time, another dimension.
I'm staying in the Città Alta district in an apartment that looks as if a painter from Florence stopped by for coffee, painted the ceilings with frescoes, and disappeared again. I stick my nose out, take 10 steps, and find myself in a gourmet shop. Around the corner is a picturesque little square with a pizzeria, and a bit further begins true Italian gourmet hell. Polenta e Osei, truffles, homemade pasta, stracciatella ice cream – here in Bergamo, it all tastes completely different, better.
And then Piazza Vecchia... Stone walls, pavement of wine-colored bricks, fountain with lions. Beauty here doesn't want to rush, it wants to be perceived drop by drop. You want to dose it. Gulp it in small sips – like that first touch of the city on the soul.
The first touch with the city was intense – from stone, through the silence of sacred buildings, to sweetness... to the amazing local pasta: casoncelli.
Today you were a generous host.
And in the morning?
In the morning you'll show me the misty valley...
And I'll try to taste dolce far niente.
Day Two – Stone. Sun. Shadow.
Morning sun caresses stone and pavement, old and new stories fold in harmony like layers of tiramisu. Vespas dance through narrow streets, the scent of Arancini calls for understanding the local rhythm.
In the lower part of the city, the Santo Spirito church greets me. Light, silence, arches. In L'Erbolario I encounter a botanical dream, in a bar the funniest toilet in Italy with instructions like from a movie. Aragostine with pistachio shoots me to heaven. One crunch – and the cream flies into my mouth like a Boeing 737.
And in the evening? I return to Città Alta and realize I haven't tasted the famous polenta yet.
And it immediately lands on the table:
– golden porridge,
– mushrooms,
– taleggio,
– a stream of butter.
It doesn't look like Instagram. But it's delicious. The wind steals my scarf from my hair. I go to rest under the frescoes. Evening brings me Pinsa Romana – crispy, light, sauce just right.
This food supposedly doesn't know cutlery. Only the gesture of joy by hand.
So I roll up my sleeves. And I can't stop.
On the way home I pass by Antico Lavatoio – a marble laundry with a cast-iron roof. It functioned until the 50s.
I see myself washing shirts there and laughing with girls under olive trees.
This city has a sense of contrast and humor.
Tomorrow I'll find another piece of your beauty.
Day Three – Il dolce far niente - sweet idleness
On the third day, the sun took a golden comb and combed the clouds' hair into a bun. I haven't seen such beautiful clouds in a long time – they sat nicely in a row like soldiers on the ramparts of Rocca fortress.
It's a beautiful quiet place with light falling on old walls and trees. The peace of gardens with marble fountains breathes with time that perhaps doesn't even flow here. A view of a city where time has stopped. I don't want to leave this shot.
But today there's exceptionally no queue for the funicular. The funicular silently takes me to the lower city.
I buy coffee capsules and sit on church steps with a baguette. Monday crumbles into pieces.
Catellana's hyperrealistic sculpture of a child rewrites reality. I need to eat that experience – I choose a piece of heaven in the form of mascarpone, a bit of cocoa and a drop of amaretto in a glass with ladyfingers. Simply Tiramisu.
With food here, it's such that the first days you try a bit of everything and the next days you have nothing to exchange it for.
Cafés here aren't places of work, but of conversations. And at home? I find those capsules hidden in laundry detergent. This apartment is a small escape room. But designer. And me? I fall asleep. With legs full of 12 kilometers of wandering.
Day Four – Dolce vita between shadows and full moon
To live, to breathe – and take life through different streets.
Sometimes it just works out: you go off the main route, let your feet go where they want. And they know.
This way you find portals to other times. Column shadows, sculptures that are silent, but you feel their voice. For whole centuries the sun shines on them, rain falls – they stand in silence. You touch their feet and you touch the past.
The funicular carries me to the castle, horizons roll like paintings. Below the funicular is the best cappuccino in Bergamo. Lasagna with mushrooms – sinful gift. And then... botanical garden. A small paradise where even silence has its roots. I find shade under a banana leaf. I close my eyes. I fall asleep.
For a moment I'm Robinson Crusoe in a green embrace.
(This place is a green dream, a small paradise on Earth.)
I descend... and something rises within me. Emotions layer one over another. It's a full moon. And I already know it won't let me sleep.
What helps?
Ice cream.
And not just any. I'm looking for the right one. The first corner one weak, the second better... but the third – Gelateria on Piazza Lorenzo Mascheroni – fulfilled my dream.
Clementine & pink pepper. Gala apple & cardamom.
Not ice cream. Magic.
I'll play Mariage d'Amour. Night is here. And dreams full of emotions.
Arrivederci until tomorrow.
Day Five – Finding
Lunch among ancient columns. Tagliatelle with pepper cream, olive oil, meringues, coffee with a heart. A city that tells me today: you're in the right place.
The fountain listens to my wish to return. Then one more stop – Lavender & Chamomile ice cream. And finally... Convento di San Francesco.
I enter. The ticket is only for the museum, but I need more.
I ask. And the man with the key unlocks. Not doors. But space between worlds.
Columns. Frescoes. Silence.
But moments will remain. And breath that someone understood.
I stand there. And I think:
Geometry – but not strict.
Organic – but not chaotic.
Colors that breathe earth, sun, stone, leaves.
Maybe there's a word for it:
"I don't want to impress you. I want you to breathe."
Evening I pack. Farewell. And a sentence that remains:
I fall asleep knowing that what should stay – will stay.
When the frescoes disappear in the taxi's rearview mirror, Bergamo will remain within me. A city that opened to me like an ancient secret.