Brembate di Sopra

The village takes its name from the Brembo, along whose right bank it lies, and the tag di Sopra, upper, has for centuries distinguished it from Brembate di Sotto downstream, now simply Brembate. The first documents naming it date from 856; under the Lombards the district was often called Lemine, and before that the Romans had settled it, drawn by the military road linking Bergamo to Como.

The town arms, gold and green divided by a two-stepped band, are a stylised cross-section of the land: mountains above, the river in the middle, the plain below. Brembate lost its independence twice, both times to Ponte San Pietro, under Napoleon and again in 1927, recovering it only after the Second World War. A small airfield was built here in 1916, used by the military in the First World War and then left to go; a more successful conversion is the old water tower, turned into a solar tower for teaching astronomy.