The starting point to get to know the city is Bergamo Alta, where Piazza Duomo is located, primarily home to the beautiful Colleoni Chapel. In the square there are also the Baptistery, the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore with no façade but with four entrances including the two entrances “of the white lions” and “of the red lions” and of course the Cathedral of S. Alessandro in whose apse are preserved precious works by Tiepolo.
Piazza Vecchia, defined by Le Corbusier “the most beautiful square in Italy” is in fact a splendid space created between 1440 and 1493 suspended in time to admire: the eighteenth-century fountain in the center, the Palazzo della Ragione, considered the municipal building more ancient than all Italy, and the Ghibelline Tower called “The Campanone” from which every day at 10 pm ring a hundred strokes, just as happened in the past when the citizens were warned of the beginning of the curfew.
The jewel of the most recent part of Bergamo, is undoubtedly the Sentierone, an alley in part porticoed and partly wooded, on which overlook the Donizzetti Theater and the beautiful Church of St. Bartolomeo, inside which you can admire the altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child, by Lorenzo Lotto.
One of the places of greatest interest is the Accademia Carrara, a picture gallery built at the end of the 18th century with 1800 paintings ranging from the masterpieces by Raphael, Botticelli, Canaletto, Tiepolo and Mantegna. In front of the academy is the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art with works by De Chirico and Kandinsky.