Bergamo wouldn’t be the same without its impressive Venetian Walls. This spectacular circuit is over six km long: it’s the perfect place to take a romantic walk and enjoy wonderful sunsets, and it has been enclosing the beauties of the Upper Town for more than four centuries.
The priceless artistic and cultural value of the Venetian Walls is demonstrated by their recognition as a Unesco World Heritage site.
They were built starting from 1561 by the Republic of Venice in order to face enemies attacks, but History was kind with them: maybe due to their stunning beauty, they never underwent any siege. That is why they remained almost intact to the present day.
The Walls consist of 14 bastions, 2 platforms, 100 embrasures for cannons, 2 armouries, four gates, not to mention the underground structures featuring sallies, passages and tunnels: don’t miss the chance to walk inside the Walls and to visit the casemates of San Michele and San Giovanni!
The construction of the Walls required the destruction of more than 250 buildings, including 8 religious properties such as the Sant’Alessandro Cathedral and the Dominican convent of Santo Stefano: that’s the reason for the 8 excommunications occurred during the works.
Lots of workers were employed to raise them, directed by Venice and Bergamo architects, due to the dimension of the project.
The Unesco World Heritage nomination enlists the Walls within the serial and transnational site named “Venetian fortifications between XVI and XVII Century”.
The purpose is enhancing all the defensive systems built by the Republic of Venice between the XVI and the XVII, in order to connect them by an ideal thread.
Out of curiosity
Some stretches of the walls were already there during the Roman era, documented back in the VIII Century: we can still spot a few traces of them in via Vagine, under the Santa Grata cloister and on the left side of Viale delle Mura, west of the funicular layout (ex via degli Anditi).
These ruins were in extremely bad conditions in the early XVI Century, so they were almost utterly replaced by the new Walls. Once the works were completed, the defensive perimeter turned out to be completely new, without any part of the previous fortifications.
Bergamo wouldn’t be the same without its impressive Venetian Walls. This spectacular circuit is over six km long: it’s the perfect place to take a romantic walk and enjoy wonderful sunsets, and it has been enclosing the beauties of the Upper Town for more than four centuries.
The priceless artistic and cultural value of the Venetian Walls is demonstrated by their recognition as a Unesco World Heritage site.
They were built starting from 1561 by the Republic of Venice in order to face enemies attacks, but History was kind with them: maybe due to their stunning beauty, they never underwent any siege. That is why they remained almost intact to the present day.
The Walls consist of 14 bastions, 2 platforms, 100 embrasures for cannons, 2 armouries, four gates, not to mention the underground structures featuring sallies, passages and tunnels: don’t miss the chance to walk inside the Walls and to visit the casemates of San Michele and San Giovanni!
The construction of the Walls required the destruction of more than 250 buildings, including 8 religious properties such as the Sant’Alessandro Cathedral and the Dominican convent of Santo Stefano: that’s the reason for the 8 excommunications occurred during the works.
Lots of workers were employed to raise them, directed by Venice and Bergamo architects, due to the dimension of the project.
The Unesco World Heritage nomination enlists the Walls within the serial and transnational site named “Venetian fortifications between XVI and XVII Century”.
The purpose is enhancing all the defensive systems built by the Republic of Venice between the XVI and the XVII, in order to connect them by an ideal thread.
Out of curiosity
Some stretches of the walls were already there during the Roman era, documented back in the VIII Century: we can still spot a few traces of them in via Vagine, under the Santa Grata cloister and on the left side of Viale delle Mura, west of the funicular layout (ex via degli Anditi).
These ruins were in extremely bad conditions in the early XVI Century, so they were almost utterly replaced by the new Walls. Once the works were completed, the defensive perimeter turned out to be completely new, without any part of the previous fortifications.
