Entrance gate to the Citta Alta
Old town from the castle hill
Piazza Vecchia July 2015
[from FB post: July 29, 2015]
Imagine what would happen if your once busy, but now defunct airport became a regional hub for a discount airline??? It would, of course, transform the region around you cuz of so many people coming and going. That is Bergamo, Italy. It is a beautiful old city that really was not on anyone's radar until RyanAir made it one of their hubs.
The city is in the foothills of the Alps and there is the "low city" (new) and the "high city" (very old). It is an amazing and vibrant place. Also, where else can you land and get on a city bus for 3 dollars and be in the middle of downtown in 15 minutes??
I am happy I decided to spend a day here and you know, if I am traveling in Europe again in the future, I wouldn't mind using this as a stop off place.
Except of course... ITALY IS EXPENSIVE. oh well, all this good stuff comes at a price I guess.
The High Price of Rebirth
I had never heard of Bergamo, in fact, most people hadn't. Historically, its airfield started life as military, but over time switched to civilian and then became an underused, forgotten cousin-airport to Milan. Bergamo's airport languished in relative obscurity. Enter Ryanair which specialized in flights between older or under-used airports in Europe and Bergamo was reborn. The Irish airline literally transformed Bergamo overnight from a sleepy out-of-the-way town that was quirkily quaint for being divided into two levels connected by a steep path (or a funicular railway) to one of Europe's major budget airline's hubs. The best part of it, as I mentioned in the post, was that the airport was almost next to the lower city. A short 15 minute bus ride dropped passengers right in front of the main train station.
I discovered Bergamo, as many people did, just because of a stopover and I thought, why not have a look around. The little city was absolutely charming and became one of my favorite places to pass through in Italy. It was so much easier to deal with little Bergamo rather than the massive (and far out of town) Malpensa [see: Malpensa Airport]. One could get a train into Milan quite easily from Bergamo or just hang out in the Upper City at a cafe with expansive views over the plains of the Po Valley below.
I stayed in an older, yet swank hotel near the train station in the lower city. The manager on my first visit told me that Ryanair's arrival had been a godsend to the local economy. Little Bergamo boomed and as a result of its popularity as a transit point, the airport had to be upgraded. Ironically, that led to its closure for a few months which had a short-term, devastating effect on Bergamo's economy. She sighed and explained that was the moment the people of Bergamo realized how closely linked their city had become to the airport (and Ryanair).
Apparently Bergamaschis spoke a very unusual local dialect of Italian that was famous in northern Italy. In fact, once in Bergamo people would be quick to tell you that the people of the upper town had a different accent from the people of the lower town! Wow. I found the locals to be a little more tolerant than in other northern Italian towns - maybe with all the Ryanair flights arriving with cash-laden tourists from around the globe, the typical northern Italian disdain for outsiders was somehow tempered? I truly liked Bergamo.
Unfortunately, all of this came at a very high price. With the rise of Chinese tourism in Europe [see: changing tourist faces], many of those tourists also used Ryanair and stopped off in Bergamo like me. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, one of the worst affected cities in Italy was Bergamo. In fact, it was probably one of the first cities to be exposed to COVID 19 by unwitting Chinese tourists. Ryanair basically became a vector to spread the virus all over Europe from little Bergamo. As the pandemic unfolded, Italy was hard hit with the region of Lombardy frequently mentioned, especially Bergamo. Given Italy's aged population, I can't help but think Bergamo lost a lot of residents before the world learned to cope with COVID (and get vaccinated).
In hindsight, I wonder if Bergamo thinks it was all worth it? Still a Ryanair hub with tourism rebounding, surely the fortunes of Bergamo are recovering as well. What an unfortunately high price to pay for a previously unknown, quirky little town built on two levels in the foothills of the Alps.
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