A prodigious noise in the streets before five o’clock the next morning gave us the first warning that the great fair of Bergamo was in full swing; sleep was impossible, and so we were soon out, enjoying the busy throng which crowded the streets of the Borgo, in a before-breakfast walk; the crowd of women selling fruit, the bright colours of their dresses, the rich tints of stuff hung out for sale, the display of hair-pins and other ornaments in the innumerable silversmiths’ shops, and the noisy, laughing, talking people who animated the whole scene, made the narrow arcaded streets of the busy place most amusing. After breakfast we started at once for the Città, as the old city of Bergamo is called. It stands on a lofty hill overlooking the Borgo San Leonardo, within whose precincts we had slept, quite distinct from it and enclosed within its own walls. The ascent was both steep and hot, but the view at the entrance gateway of the Città over the flat Lombard country was very striking, and well repaid the labour of the ascent. This vast plain of bluish-green colour, intersected in all directions by rows of mulberry-trees and poplars, diversified only by the tall white lines of the campanili which mark every village in this part of Lombardy, and stretching away in the same endless level as far as the eye could reach, was grand if only on account of its simplicity, and had for us all the charm of novelty. Through narrow and rather dirty streets, which do little credit to the cleanly habits of the Bergamask nobility, to whom it seems that the Città is sacred, and whose palaces are, many of them, large and important buildings, we reached at last the Piazza Vecchia, around which is gathered almost all that in my eyes gives interest to Bergamo. Across the upper end of the Piazza stretches the Broletto, or town-hall, supported on open arches, through which pleasant glimpses are obtained of the cathedral and church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, which last is the great architectural feature of the city.