Bergamo

Piazza Vecchia and the Campanone

I received this beautiful postcard in the very last days of the first semester of Erasmus. My flatmate and another friend visited Bergamo as a goodbye trip. 

Bergamo is a small city very close to Milano. It has an international airport on which I arrived to Italy a couple of times.

The Piazza Vecchia and the Civic tower – the Campanone, in Italian – can be seen in the postcard. The Campanone is 53 meter-high and provides a nice panorama to the old town. The tower houses the largest bell in whole Lombardy region.

From: K. W., D. P.
Date: January 2013

Verona

Clockwise from top left to right: Lamberti Tower, Piazza Erbe from the Lamberti Tower, the Arena, Ponte Scaligero, Ponte Pietra

A week after the Lake Como excursion, another dear friend came to visit me in Milano. Those days were quite busy :) The city we chose to visit that time was Verona.

Verona is located in the Veneto region of Italy, the city of Romeo & Juliet. Shakespeare set his famous play in Verona and the city feeds on its fame until today. 

We visited Juliet's House (Casa di Giulietta), which has a romantic balcony. The House is the monument of love, where lovers write their names on the wall, put colourful lockets on the gate to protest their love for each other and even stick chewing gums on the wall – eww. When you enter to the house, there is a nice, lean-figured bronze statue of Juliet, standing in the courtyard. Urban legend has it if you touch the right breast of Juliet, it brings you good luck in love. The statue was placed there in 1972, but thanks to this strange custom, it was necessary to be removed in 2014, due to conservational reasons. (I touched the original breast, yaay!)

I found Verona very charming, its bridges on the Adige river, which we walked along, the Portoni della Bra and the antique Arena, built in the 1st century AD. Due to its high number of historical buildings, the city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000.

Date: January 2013