Porta San Lorenzo (“San Lorenzo Gate”) used to be the passage to enter the city for those who came from the valleys north of Bergamo and from the countries beyond the Alps.
Its ancient name comes from the church that used to be there, which was demolished by the Venetian Government in order to build the Walls. The second appellation, Porta Garibaldi, derives from a crucial historical event: in June 1859 Giuseppe Garibaldi, leading his volunteers (the Hunters of the Alps) entered in Bergamo right through this gate, setting the city free from the Austrian domination.
Garibaldi was a renowned leader and played a very significant role in the process of Italy unification. We can also say that he had a special connection with Bergamo: when he led the expedition of the Thousand in 1860, 174 of them came from Bergamo.
They sailed off from Quarto (Genoa) and got to Marsala, in Sicily, in order to go back up the peninsula and set Southern Italy free from the house of Bourbon: in Teano, near Caserta, Garibaldi met the King of Sardinia Vittorio Emanuele II and gave him the Italian’s territories he had just conquered. As a reference to this expedition, Bergamo is also called the “Città dei Mille”, the City of the Thousand.
San Lorenzo Gate was the only one that remained closed for a certain time, more precisely from 1605 to 1627, as it was considered hard to monitor to avoid any ambush. However, the travellers from Bergamo’s valleys who used to pass through this gate to enter the city started to protest strongly and eventually made it open again. Likewise the other gate of the Walls, till XX Century the San Lorenzo Gate closed at 10 p.m., in order to guarantee the city’s safety.
Porta San Lorenzo (“San Lorenzo Gate”) used to be the passage to enter the city for those who came from the valleys north of Bergamo and from the countries beyond the Alps.
Its ancient name comes from the church that used to be there, which was demolished by the Venetian Government in order to build the Walls. The second appellation, Porta Garibaldi, derives from a crucial historical event: in June 1859 Giuseppe Garibaldi, leading his volunteers (the Hunters of the Alps) entered in Bergamo right through this gate, setting the city free from the Austrian domination.
Garibaldi was a renowned leader and played a very significant role in the process of Italy unification. We can also say that he had a special connection with Bergamo: when he led the expedition of the Thousand in 1860, 174 of them came from Bergamo.
They sailed off from Quarto (Genoa) and got to Marsala, in Sicily, in order to go back up the peninsula and set Southern Italy free from the house of Bourbon: in Teano, near Caserta, Garibaldi met the King of Sardinia Vittorio Emanuele II and gave him the Italian’s territories he had just conquered. As a reference to this expedition, Bergamo is also called the “Città dei Mille”, the City of the Thousand.
San Lorenzo Gate was the only one that remained closed for a certain time, more precisely from 1605 to 1627, as it was considered hard to monitor to avoid any ambush. However, the travellers from Bergamo’s valleys who used to pass through this gate to enter the city started to protest strongly and eventually made it open again. Likewise the other gate of the Walls, till XX Century the San Lorenzo Gate closed at 10 p.m., in order to guarantee the city’s safety.
