Bonate Sopra

Bonate Sopra stands on the right bank of the Brembo, inside the isola bergamasca: a triangle of land based on Monte Canto, with the Brembo and the Adda for sides. The name may come from a landowner called Bonus, or from terrae bonae, good farming soil, or from the chief of a Cenomani Gaulish tribe, inferred from the suffix -ate common in Bergamo place names. In Roman times a vicus of the Pagus Fortunensis stood here, with a centuriation on the Mapello-Bonate Sotto axis; the earliest written records, from 745, already show it split into lower and upper.

Once the island passed to Venice, part of the land went in fief to the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni's family, yet the area was known as the triangle of hunger: a document of the time describes it without trade or merchandise, its farmers and labourers barely gathering grain enough to live, with no privilege and every levy to pay. The arms repeat the emblem of the noble da Bonate family, with the letters BO.NA.TE.SUP. added to set it apart and tie it to the town. At Ghiaie an oratory was built after the Marian apparitions the child Adelaide Roncalli was said to have had in 1944; pilgrims still come.