The City Plan

When I met with my supervisor, Mrs. Barcella, she was very interested in discussing the general city planning with me. The basic plans for the city of Bergamo were the same basic plans as in other Italian cities that were built around the same time. First of all there were two major streets running through the city. There would be a main street going north to south, called the cardo, and another main street crossing it going east to west, called the decumano. Markets and buildings lined these main streets. Secondary streets formed off these parallel to the initial roads. Buildings would have a certain amount of allotted space to take up and this resulted in a rather grid-like city structure. The first walls that were built around Italian cities were the Roman walls. These walls surrounded the grid-like city in a square shape. Each side of the walls had a gate, so there was a north, east, south, and west gate to the city. As time went on, into the Middle Ages, the city grew outside of the initial Roman walls. The Roman walls were destroyed and a circular wall was created to surround the growing city. This happened around the 1100s, and 1200s. In the case of Bergamo there was a third series of walls built. The third walls were the Venetian walls. The Venetian walls were built around the 1500s and were jagged in shape and were important for the defense of Bergamo. Bergamo was in a key spot between Venice and Milan, so it needed to be protected. The walls of the Middle Ages were destroyed in order to make the Venetian walls. The walls were equipped with cannons, but Bergamo was never attacked so the wall remained in tact and the cannons were not used. Bergamo expanded but since the Citta Alta (upper city) was on a hill, the expansion happened lower down. Because of this, a new part of the city formed, a downtown or Citta Bassa. The Venetian walls did not get in the way of this expansion so they are some of the few walls that still remain in any of the old Italian cities. This is obviously a very simple description of the city planning but I felt that Mrs. Barcella did a very nice job explaining it. This was significant because it was not only the way Bergamo was formed but it was the way nearly all Italian cities were formed. Below is a rough sketch I drew of the city planning described by Mrs. Barcella: