Visitors have not always been kind to Bergamo. Most of us still place it as Milan-Bergamo after its airport (actually it’s Il Caravaggio Orio al Serio International Airport), and this year we saw it as the Covid-19 gateway to Europe.
The pandemic hit Lombardy hard and early; the world watching in horror as its grip fastened last February and March – a preview of things to come. It was a surreal light to shine on Bergamo, a medieval city in the Alpine foothills, suddenly portrayed not as a bustling cultural and historical hub, but through rolling television coverage of empty cobbled streets, eerie churches and boarded shutters.