Bergamo Wall Plant – Papaver rhoeas (Poppy)

  

Poppies (Papaver rhoeas) in Bergamo, Italy - growing on walls.

“Walls, huh, yeah
What are they good for?
Growing everything!”

Sung to the tune of “War”, an anthem made famous by Edwin Star in 1970. Poppies (papaveri in Italian) - scientifically known as Papaver rhoeas – are a plant you find often growing in and on walls around Bergamo, Italy. In the last week, we’ve resumed our jogs along Via Torni and Via G. Marieni. We stopped to snap some photos because the poppies were so beautiful, and we needed a break.

The walls along the streets via Torni and via G Marieni – on the “backside” of Città Alta of Bergamo – are a good place to find many of the tag: wall plants we’ve covered in past posts. These streets (really think "country lane") remind us a lot of our time in 2007 – 2008 when we lived in Florence and went for walks in the low hills just south of the city, in Arcetri. In those hills, we would often walk by Villa Galileo - Part of an estate called "Il Gioiello" - where Galileo spent the last part of his life under house arrest.

Other than facile evocation of the "War" song because it popped (no pun intended) into our heads (both Wall and War with one syllable starting with W), poppies do relate thematically in that they have become a symbol of remembrance and honor of those that have died in war.


  

Poppies (Papaver rhoeas) in Bergamo, Italy - growing on walls along Via Torni and Via G. Marieni.

 
Via Marieni (left) and Via Torni (right)  in Bergamo, Italy - a nice country lane for a walk or run.

A list of our wall plants we've seen in Bergamo thus far:

• [Papavero] Papaver rhoeas - Common poppy
• [Campanulaceae] Campanula poscharskyana (post) – Serbian Bellflower
• [Plantaginaceae] Antirrhinum majus (post) - Common Snapdragon
• [Crassulaceae[ Sedum palmeri (post)
• [Crassulaceae] Sedum album and Sedum dasyphyllum (post) - White Stonecrop and Corsican Stonecrop
• [Papavero] Fumaria officinalis (post) – Earth Smoke
• [Brassicaceae] Aubrieta deltoidea - Purple Rock Cress and Iberis sempervirens - Evergreen Candytuft (post)
• [Geraniaceae] Geranium robertianum (post) - Stinking Bob
• [Asteraceae] Erigeron karvinskianus (post) - Mexican Fleabane
• [Aspleniaceae] Asplenium ceterach (post) - Rustyback Fern
• [Aspleniaceae] Asplenium ruta-muraria (post) - Wall Rue
• [Aspleniaceae] Asplenium trichomanes (post) - Maidenhair spleenwort
• [Urticaceae] Parietaria diffusa (post) – Pellitory
• [Plantaginaceae] Cymbalaria muralis (post) - Pennywort
  

Bergamo Street Sign Language Lesson XLIV - Real Estate Prospecting Letter

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A real estate prospecting letter in Italian.

We used to get these letters a lot in Seattle. Now, they are showing up in our mailbox in Bergamo. We feel so at home now! Instead of tossing the letter out without looking at it, we thought ah ha, an opportunity for a language lesson and while not a street sign, it came from the street so that qualifies.

Here's the letter with underlined words and phrases, which are discussed after.

---

Gentilissima famiglia,

Mi permetto di contattarvi, perché in questi giorni sono passato per il nostro consueto monitoraggio immobiliare di zona.

La nostra agenzia ha ricevuto mandato di ricerca, da parte di diversi clienti, su immobili di varie metrature e tipologie ubicati nel Vostro quartiere, sia in vendita che in locazione.

Di seguito riporto i miei numeri di tel. XXX.XXXXXX.XX cell. XXX.XX.XX.XXX, qualora aveste l’intenzione di mettere in vendita o in locazione un immobile di vostra proprietà, sarei ben lieto di soddisfarvi con una valutazione gratuita.

Auspico un vostro contatto per potervi conoscere e parlare del vostro immobile.

Nell’attesa di potervi incontrare personalmente, porgo i miei più cordiali saluti.

Geom. XXX
cell.XXXXXXXXXX

---

Some interesting language bits for this formal correspondence are:

• Mi permetto di (v) – first person singular of the verb permettersi di. It means “let me” or “allow me” to do something. In this case, contact you, the house owner. The first sentence is something like this: “I take the liberty of contacting you (plural)”.
  
  
• consueto (agg) – “usual or normal”. In less formal communication, you can also use solito or normale. Di consueto means “usually”.
  
  
• mandato di ricerca – “BOLO (be on the look out for)”. Mandato derives from the verb mandare - “to send” and means “mandate or warrant or request”. Ricerca is “research”. So, the real estate agent has been asked to be on the look out by some clients – or so they say.
  
  
• ubicati (agg) - “located (plural)” from the verb ubicare - “to place or locate”.
  
  
• locazione (nf) - “lease or rent”. You can also use affitto to mean the same thing. Locazione is definitely a candidate for the list we gave in the post Italian Words Ending With -azione and Easier Alternatives for Speaking and Writing.
  
  
• sarei ben lieto di - “I would be happy to”. Sarei is the first person conditional of essere. Note that the ending letter E of bene is dropped to make the phrase flow better. A less formal way to say the same thing would be sarebbe un piacere per me or mi farebbe molto piacere.
  
  
• auspico (v) - “I hope” from auspicare.
  
  
• porgo i miei più cordali saluti - “I offer my cordial greetings”, or just “goodbye”, “best wishes”. The verb porgere means to “extend or pass or offer” something.

An Early Spring Hike to Lago Branchino in Valcanale (Ardesio), in the Upper Val Seriana

 

Left: View south from Corno Branchino towoard Corna Piana.

Right: Climbing Corno Branchino

It was embarrassing. As we approached the trailhead, we assured our friend driving that we hadn’t been here and in fact, we had been here twice before. Once with this friend and once on our own. Give us a break, we are still new to this area!

Duration: 7 hours (includes lunch)

Elevation: 843 m

Length: 10.5 km

Location: Val Seriana

We first came to Valcanale – a east-west valley branching off the upper Val Seriana - in July 2018. See Hike in Valcanale: Rifugio Branchino and Lago Branchino. Can I just say, wow, we took some great photos on that day. We weren’t just using cell phone cameras at that time like we are now.

Then a few weeks later, we started our big hike in Valcanale. See Seven Days on the Sentiero delle Orobie – A Journey Through the Bergamo Alps. We arrived by bus from Bergamo that time.

Today’s hike was mostly on snow to reach Passo Branchino and return. At the pass, we went up to see the “pyramid” on top of Corno Branchino (2029 m). Given that Rifugio Branchino (1787 m) was closed, we ate at Rifugio Alpe Corte (1410 m).

Because of the snow, we don’t have many flower pictures save for [Asteraceae] Tossilago farfara – Coltsfoot and [Asteraceae] Petasites albus – White Butterbur, both of which are described in our Bergamasque Prealps Flowers and Flora Pinterest for Asteraceae page.

We saw an interesting sign in the rifugio that talked about the biodiversity of this area. We’ve wanted to hike the Sentiero dei fiori (part of which is trail 222) for some time. Still on our list. The trail goes from Passo Branchino to Rifugio Capanna 2000. The flowers on that trail are supposed to be amazing. 

The sign in the rifugio talked about insects named after local place names and/or are unique to this area including: Scythris arerai – a moth (story), Trechus montisarerae – beetle, Abax arerae – beetle, Leptusa areraensis – beetle, Ischyropsalis lithoclasica – spider, and Allegrettia comotti – beetle.  Arera(e) refers to the nearby Pizzo Arera.

  

Left: Climbing to Corno Branchino.
Center: On the south flank of Corno Branchino.

Right: View north from Corno Branchino.

  

Left: Rifugio Alpe Corte - a plate of ribs (costine) with potatoes.
Center: Rifugio Alpe Corte - torta della nonna.

Right: A sign describing the biodiversity of the area including insects found or named after local place names like Pizzo Arera.

  

Left: Heading toward Rifugio Alpe Corte.
Center: Tracks for this hike.
Right: Heading to Rifugio Branchino.

  

Left: Trail 218 near Rifugio Alpe Corte.

Center: View south from Rifugio Alpe Corte toward Pizzo Arera.

Right: Trail toward Passo Branchino in early spring, full of snow.

 

View southeast from Passo Branchio toward Passo Val Vedra. Notice the red tinge of the snow from the sands of Sahara. Each year tens of millions of tons of dust blow out from North Africa carried on strong seasonal winds. Some of that ends up in Italy.

Consonno, Italy – The Ghost City of Brianza

Overview | Ex novo | The future | Photos

  

Images of Consonno, Italy. The minaret is the most characteristic part of this abandoned town. 

Overview

We finally had a chance to see the little-known (to Italians that is) town of Consonno, Italy. We drove over from Bergamo with a friend, whose partner pooh-poohed the place as boring and for druggies. Sour grapes...we had a interesting visit.

Consonno located at 640m above sea level in a forest is just a few miles west (and uphill) from the town of Olginate on Lago di Garlate. Lago di Garlate is like the left foot of Lago di Como. It’s a part of Lombardy that is off the beaten track.

Great, but why is Consonno famous? Why is it a ghost city? The Count Mario Bagno – a entrepreneur from Milan - purchased the town in the early 1960s and bulldozed most of the small agricultural hamlet to create a mini “Las Vegas” complete with hotel, dance hall, shops, restaurant, and fantastical mishmash of architecture including pagodas and minarets. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the site was in full swing.

Mother Nature however had other plans for the mountainous site: landslides. The final landslide put a kibosh on the mini Las Vegas in 1976. Though, the attraction had already been in decline.

Today, the town is private and owned by the heirs of the Count. It has been up for sale for some time. We heard the price was about 12 million. Got some loose change hanging around?

Except for opening days and other special events, the road leading to Consonno is usually barred and you leave your car at the farthest point you can get to and walk the rest of the way on foot on the road or on one of the many trails. About 2km. Today, we were lucky because the group Sbanda Brianza Longboarding was running a clean-up day (April 6) and the gates were open so we drove all the way up.

Ex novo

Idealized vision (dare we say utopian) in any sort of planning involving humans has its place but taken too far often results in unsuccessful outcomes. Does a city that comes into being "naturally" (and we know this means as well lots of human intervention and visionary ideas) over time have a better chance of surviving compared to a city that is constructed ex-novo?  There are examples of planned cities that are considered successful like Brasília (Brazil), Canberra (Australia), and Pearl-Qatar (Qatar) to name a few. (For the record and without having visited: Pearl-Qatar to us looks like it would be horrible to live in. And, I can't say much more for Brasília.)

There are also planned city examples that were failures: Lavasa (India), Ordos (China), PlanIT Valley (Portugal). Maybe it depends on the ideas and motives behind the ex-novo construction and a bit of luck.

Visiting Consonno made us think of many things touching on other utopian projects and ex novo cities, including:

• Fordlândia, a district in the city of Aveiro, in the Brazilian state of Pará established by American industrialist Henry Ford in the Amazon Rainforest in 1928. The town was intended to be a prefabricated industrial town inhabited by 10,000 people to secure a source of cultivated rubber for the automobile manufacturing operations of the Ford Motor Company in the United States. The effort failed and the city was abandoned in 1934. (Check out the great album of the same name by Jóhann Jóhannsson.)
• The California Forever project in Solano County, California. We’ve learned about this project recently and are skeptical. Yes, the ideas and ideals and renderings behind this effort are great, but there is something off-putting about it. Can you really construct a community ex-novo? Communities tend to grow organically – for better or worse – from a nucleus or seed. Okay, Consonno’s aims right from the start were not as lofty as California Forever, but still, lots of money arriving to say we are going to make life wonderful should give one pause.
• The graffiti and aesthetic of Consonno made us think of Slab City in Southern California. (See Slab City Tank Farm Murals – Wheel of Kama.)
• Italy – at least in the north – has what we would say is a lot of abandoned industrial architecture. In our backyard of Val Seriana, an industrial center in Italy, you can’t help but notice the abandoned structures along the Serio river, once an important source of energy.
• In 2016, we went to see Crespi D’Adda. (See Two Day Trips from Bergamo: Sirmione and Crespi d’Adda.) Crespi d’Adda is a company town along the river Adda, built by the “enlightened” industrialist Cristoforo Benigno Crespi in the late 19th century. The factory produced textiles and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995. The idea behind Crespi d’Adda was to provide workers with more than just a place to work: the town included housing for workers as well as a school, a church, and other social services. A cradle to grave solution so to speak. The utopian ideals behind the town endured for a surprisingly long time, running from the late 1800s until the factory closed in 2003.
• In 2017, we visited the city of Palmanova, Italy. (See Walking Around Palmanova, the Fortress City in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.) We were always intrigued by the star-shaped design of the city. It was designed as a fort-city by the Venetians in the late 1500s. The design followed Renaissance utopian ideas, with interesting symmetry and a practical layout. Yet, walking around and inside the city felt awkward and like we were in a de Chirico painting - the ones with the empty and foreboding public spaces.
• In 2022, we visited the Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen in Rome. Besides walking among the erotic, oversized statues we also learned that those very same works were created with the idea of designing a perfect "World City," filled with art. This perfect city would motivate humanity to achieve a near-Utopian state. His urban planning philosophy is evident in his 1913 A World Center of Communication. The sketches of the city looked so perfect and so boring at the same time. The city was never built.

The future

We were really impressed with the Sbanda Brianza Longboarding and their work to bring this town back to life and give it new meaning.... organically, and step-by-step. And, it's cool that longboarding is a huge thing there on the road that the Count had originally built.

In Italian, Consonno has been called the Città Fantasma, Città dei Balocchi, and the Las Vegas di Brianza. Maybe there is a future name – a better name – for this area with the help of the Sbanda group to grow something more community-based and more organic.

As you drive up to Consonno, there are signs from its heyday with overly festive, almost coercive messages that basically say you will be happy here! Here they are in Italian with translations:

• “A Consonno è sempre festa.” (In Consonno, it’s always a party.)
• “Consonno è il paese più piccolo ma il più bello del mondo.” (Consonno: the smallest but most beautiful town in the world.)
• “A Consonno tutto è meraviglioso.” (Everything is wonderful in Consonno.)
• “Chi vive a Consonno campa di più.” (Those who live in Consonno live longer.)

Photos

 
Rooms that were once part of the hotel in Consonno.

 

Graffiti-lovers' paradise at Consonno.

 

The church that was an original building and the minaret constructed in the 1960s. 

 
Consonno is private property except for one part run by the Sbanda.


 

Scooby, Daphne, and Thelma and abandoned building in Consonno, Italy.

 

Signs in Consonno, Italy.  Left: A Consonno tutto è meraviglioso. Right: A Consonno è sempre festa.

  

Signs in Consonno, Italy. Left: Chi vive a Consonno campa di più. Right: Consonno è il paese più piccolo ma il più bello del mondo.

Hiking Ol Murlansì - From Colognola di Casazza to Monte Ballerino and Colli San Fermo

Overview ~ Description ~ Plants ~ Photos

 

 

Top left: View from Trail 613, north toward Lago Endine.
To right: Climbing the part of trail 613 called Ol Murlansì - a wall constructed to permit passage through the cliffs.

Bottom left: View from Colli di San Fermo hill south toward the Po River Valley plain and Val Cavallina.

Bottom right: A trail on Monte Ballerino filled with anemones.

We can see Colli San Fermo from our windows and decided that we should go check it out. We did the same with Monte Guglielmo (see Monte Guglielmo Hike) and Monte Misma (see A Walk from Albino to Bergamo via Monte Misma) and Canto Alto (see Bergamo to Canto Alto – A Sunday Hike). Okay, you get the idea, we fixate on what we see from our windows. This is our third official “hike” of 2024.

Overview

Duration: 3.75 hours
Elevation: 833 m
Length: 8.5 km
Location: Colli di San Fermo, BG, Italy

Description

We parked in Casazza just before you reach the south end of Lago Endine (Val Cavallina). Specifically, we drove up to the Santuario della Madonna del Monte Carmelo and parked behind it (uphill) in some free parking spots (here). At this point you are about at 420 m. You still must reach Monte Ballerino at 1275 m, or about 855 m (2800 ft) left to go. From the point you leave the car until you reach Monte Ballerino, it’s 3 km of all uphill. This is trail 613.

This hike does have the locally famous part called “ol Murlansì”, a sort of stone retaining wall that takes you up and through the imposing cliffside (Corna di Colognola) that Monte Ballerino sits on. Some of the sections of the trail have chains to grab on to if you need a little help or would rather concentrate on the chains rather than the drop-off – like me.

This hike made us think of Kendall Katwalk (and Beyond) Hike a bit. Ah, the good old days of hiking around Seattle.

Starting off, there wasn’t much flora to look at. At this time of year, the hornbeam (Ostrya carpinifolia - carpino nero) and ash (Fraxinus sp. - frassino) forests haven’t leafed out and the ground is bleak and brown. But, as you reach the base of the cliffs, you start seeing more flowers, enough that we felt like taking out our cameras.

When we left the car it was warm and sunny. Up top, it was foggy and cool. Not many views for us today! And, one of the main places to eat Al Colle Pizzeria was running in skeleton-crew mode. No pizzas, only a panino. The upside was we were the only ones there!

After eating and taking a quick look at the helmet-shaped church (Cappella Virgo Fidelis - Lucerna Carabinieri), we headed back to Casazza via a different trail – following the indications for Prati Cambia and Casazza – to make a loop. 

Plants

By the way, our reference for plants that we use often is this: ref


[Amaryllidaceae] Galanthus nivalis

[Asparagaceae] Scilla bifolia

[Boraginaceae] Pulmonaria angustifolia

[Brassicaceae] Cardamine heptaphylla

 

[Brassicaceae] Cardamine pentaphyllos

 

[Ericaceae] Erica carnea

[Liliaceae] Erythronium dens-canis

[Polygaceae] Polygala chamaebuxus

 

[Primulaceae] Primula acaulis

[Primulaceae] Primula veris

[Ranunculaceae] Anemonoides nemorosa

  

[Ranunculaceae] Helleborus niger

 

[Ranunculaceae] Hepatica nobilis

 

[Thymelaeaceae] Daphne mezereum

Photos

  

Views of Trail 613 - Corna di Colognola and the part called Ol Murlansì.

  

Views from the Trail from Colli San Fermo to Casazza passing through Prati Cambia.

  

Map of the area and our hiking details.

 

A helmet-shaped church in Colli San Fermo and an altar in the pasture.

A view of the Corna di Colognola with the antennas of Monte Ballerino visible. Trail 613 climbs up to Ballerino.