All Towers in Lombardy

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    Torre dei Caduti di Bergamo

    Torre dei Caduti di Bergamo (Tower of the Fallen of Bergamo) is a tower in Bergamo, located in Piazza Vittorio Veneto, in the modern part of the city, Città Bassa.   SHORT HISTORY After the Napoleonic occupation, the lower part of the city acquired a growing economic importance, primarily for the greater availability of building spaces. The choice of the area in which the tower was built was part of a larger urban reorganization project of the lower part of Bergamo, which became in the last centuries the true political and administrative center of the city. The tower, 45 meters high, was designed by the architect Marcello Piacentini. It was built starting from 1922, in an area known as Prato di Sant’Alessandro, which at the time hosted the annual Sant’Alessandro Fair, one of the most important and oldest in Lombardy, dating back to the 9th century. The tower is one of the most emblematic monuments of Città Bassa, built in the wake of the patriotic rhetoric following the First World War, not only in memory and honor of the fallen of Bergamo, but to enhance and consolidate unitary nationalism, as explicitly stated in the inauguration speech of Benito Mussolini on Read more [...]

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    Torre dell’Orologio

    Torre dell’Orologio is a beautiful clock tower in Brescia, located in Piazza della Loggia, opposite Palazzo della Loggia.   SHORT HISTORY The Clock Tower was built between 1540 and 1550 on a design by Lodovico Beretta, a local architect who also contributed to the construction of Palazzo della Loggia. The tower houses a complex mechanical clock, installed between 1544 and 1546 by Paolo Gennari from Rezzato, probably replacing a previous mechanism. The clock, on two different dials, marks the hours, the moon phases and the zodiac signs.   ARCHITECTURE The side of the tower facing Piazza della Loggia has an astronomical quadrant and a tympanum painted by Gian Giacomo Lamberti in 1547, while the second side, which overlooks Via Beccaria, has a gilded quadrant of an unknown author. On the upper part of the tower, there are two rods and a bronze bell, and two copper automata installed in 1581, depicting two men with a hammer, known in the Brescian dialect as the Màcc de le ure (Crazy of the hours). In 1595, a long portico in white Botticino marble was built by the architect Piero Maria Bagnadore at the base of the tower. Passing under the tower through a Read more [...]