Bergamo has two cities stacked on one hill. The Città Alta, the upper town, sits inside a ring of sixteenth-century walls built by the Republic of Venice, which ruled here for more than three centuries and wanted a stronghold against Milan. The walls run for about six kilometres and are pierced by gates, and UNESCO recognised them in 2017 as part of the Venetian Works of Defence between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Below lies the Città Bassa, the modern town of broad avenues and shopping streets, and a funicular links the two, a short, steep ride worth taking for its own sake.
The old town is a delight. Cobbled lanes lead to the Piazza Vecchia, a handsome square surrounded by medieval and Renaissance buildings, including a tall civic tower whose bell still rings in the evening. Next door, the Colleoni Chapel, a lavish Renaissance mausoleum with a pink and white marble facade, was built for a Venetian mercenary captain and is among the finest in Lombardy. The composer Gaetano Donizetti was born in Bergamo, and the dialect, food and humour are more earthy than those of Milan, which is only an hour's drive away.
For a motorcyclist the city is an excellent start or finish. The old town has a limited traffic zone, so park at the bottom or in the designated areas and take the funicular or walk up. From the lower town, riding north takes you quickly into the Bergamo Alps, with the Val Brembana, the Val Seriana and the roads toward the Lake Iseo and Lake Como shores within an hour. The passes, such as San Marco and Presolana, give long, well-surfaced climbs with plenty of bends and views of limestone peaks, and in summer they are popular with riders from across Lombardy. In spring and autumn the foothills are quieter.
Bergamo is a city of over a hundred thousand, so fuel, food and coffee are never an issue, and the ring road has supermarkets and petrol stations at every junction. Ponteranica, on the edge, is a small town with a few bars. The food is hearty: polenta with game or cheese, casoncelli, a stuffed pasta with butter and sage, and stracciatella, an ice cream flavour said to have been invented here. For a sweet, try a polenta e osei, a sponge cake covered in marzipan and chocolate birds.
Come on a clear day for the view from the walls across the plain to the Alps.