Mura di Bergamo: The Museum

The history of the Venetian Walls, World Heritage Site, starts from Porta Sant’Agostino

A new exhibition path dedicated to the history of the Fortress, a World Heritage Site since 2017. A new museum that comes to life inside Porta Sant’Agostino, the historic access to the city for those coming from Venice. Among multimedia stations, physical testimonies and an engaging immersive room, narration becomes an experience to get to the heart of the construction of the Walls, a stone diamond made of history and beauty, still a symbol of Bergamo today.

Informations

Full 7 €

Reduced 5€
Resident in Bergamo and province, 18-26 years old, groups of 15 people, discounts

Free
0-17 years old, Amici del Museo delle storie di Bergamo, person with disability and companion, ICOM members, accredited journalists, qualified tour guides, Abbonamento Musei Lombardia

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Military Encampment near a City

This fresco depicts an encampment in preparation for a potential siege. It fully captures the innovations and the contradictions of military evolution in the early sixteenth century: traditional armour and cold weapons coexist with new firearms, and the cavalry, infantry and artillery are lined up together. The town is surrounded by walls that can ward off a siege carried out with ladders and catapults, but which certainly can’t withstand the impact of powerful new cannons. To resist to them, in Italy the “alla moderna” fortresses , as the fortified city of Bergamo, were invented.

Portrait of Sforza Pallavicino

The painting is the only know full-length portrait of one of the key figures in the construction of the Venetian Walls: Sforza Pallavicino. He proposed to the Venetian Senate the fortification of encircling only the upper city in the walls. The beton of command in his hands and the decorated armour testify his proven experience as a man of arms, accompanied by brilliant skill in the design and construction of defensive architectures.

Corslet Parade Armour

Made in Brescia, where there was a robust supply chain for parade body armour, these corslets stood out for their etched decorations of smooth bands alternating with bands with groups of weapons and musical instruments. Cameos with facing male and female heads often appeared on the chest. These models were purchased for the bodyguards of the ruling families, or for palace guards. Between the 16^th and 17^th centuries, they were traded in Holland and Japan, where they were popular among samurai.

Mura di Bergamo: the Museum

Opened in September 2024 in one of the most iconic monuments in the Venetian fortification network, the new museum in Saint Augustine’s Gate is an additional milestone in the effort to highlight the importance of the Walls of Bergamo, a World Heritage site since 2017.

The Walls of Bergamo is a first among the many different cultural sites of the Museo delle Storie. The museum has a double “soul”: on the one hand, it has a more traditional side with a collection of paintings, fresco fragments, weapons and armor, treatises, maps, drawings and manuscripts which recount the golden age of the Serenissima Republic of Venice; on the other, a more modern and hi-tech side, with three multimedia stations for in-depth learning and a large immersive room dedicated to the history of the Walls, the true ‘heart’ of the museum.

Thanks to a dense collaborative network with important conservation institutions and private collectors, the museum displays 38 pieces which recount what it took to design and realize the Venetian Walls of Bergamo, a construction project that lasted 27 long years and involved the entire hilltop city.

Discover the museum

Four sections and a gripping audiovisual tale place the Venetian Walls of Bergamo in their historical context: the landmark events of the 16^th century. A snapshot of geopolitical, cultural, military and material history from the Renaissance.

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