Bergamo
Bergamo’s great fair of Saint Alexander, held every year in August, was once the rival of those great trading fairs of Leipzig and Beaucaire. Of late it is of less importance, but holds somewhat to its ancient traditions. Certainly it filled the Albergo Capello d’Oro to such an extent that it was doubtful for a time if we could find a place. A sight of our mud-covered automobile and of our generally bedraggled appearance—for it had rained again, though that of itself is nothing remarkable in Italy, and we had “mud-larked it” for the last fifty kilometres,—caused somebody’s conscience to smite him and find us shelter.
Beyond Bergamo one enters the classic Italian Lake region, that which has usually been seen through a honeymoon perspective, a honeymoon that is long-lasting, as it invariably is in Italy as some of us know. All through this lakeland of north Italy is an unbroken succession of charms which certainly, from the sentimental and romantic point, has no equal in Italy, or out of it in the same area.
The whole battery of little cities, towns, and townlets which surround Lakes Como, Varese, Lugano and Maggiore are delightful from all points. Theirs is a unique variety of charm which comports with the tranquil mood, not at all the same as that possessed by the average scorching automobilist who reads as he runs, and wishes to eat and drink and absorb his romantic and historic lore in the same up-to-date fashion. Not that the region is unsuited to automobile travel. Not at all, the roads thereabouts are quite the best in Italy, and the towns themselves picturesquely charming, if often lacking in ruined monuments of mediævalism of the first rank. All of it is historic ground, and filled with echoes of fact and fancy which still reverberate from its hills and through its vales.
Not all of these lake-side towns can be catalogued here, no more than are all included in the average itinerary, but from Lecco, at the southern end of the Lecco arm of the Lago di Como, to Orta on the Lago d’Orta will be found myriads of scenic surprises, dotted here and there with quaint waterside towns, the lakes themselves being punctuated with great white winged barques, with here and there the not unpicturesque coil of smoke belching into the clear sky from a cranky, fussy little steamboat.