The name ends in the suffix -ate, common in place names around Bergamo and typical of Gaulish settlement; the rest is said to come from the chief of the Celtic tribe that lived here. Under Rome the imperial troops laid the village out on a cardo and a decumano, the camps set in a quadrilateral along the two axes, and the old centre still follows those lines. Calcinate sits on the upper Bergamo plain, crossed by the Zerra stream.
The first document to name it is from 1148: the canons agreed with the homines de Calcinate to draw a channel off the Serio and set out clauses for its upkeep, and in it lies the first loosening of the inhabitants' feudal duties. In 1213 the vicini et consules universitatis de Calcinate signed a contract without naming the lawful feudal lords. Water kept shaping the land: ditches and lesser channels branch off the roggia Borgogna, which made the place a farming village of wheat and maize. The arms take those of the Passi counts with the tinctures changed: four gold capital P's on black, set in pairs, each pair under a medieval abbreviation mark, though the ones in use do not quite match the official blazon.
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📅 Every year, on 15 August, with a patronal fair, celebrations and palio
Calcinate celebrates Our Lady of the Assumption on 15 August, in the church dedicated to her, with the patronal fair, celebrations and palio.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Calcinate, but an easy day trip away.
