On the name of Colzate there are at least four theories and none of them wins. The one with most credit is Olivieri's, who starting from the wording Colligiatae, which appears in a document of 928, thinks of lands belonging to a collegiate body of canons; Zambelli and Mazzi imagined instead an alliance between fortified settlements. Then there are the two that the source calls unsupported: the Roman family name Caltius, proposed by Gerhard Rohlfs, and Colzetis, the name of a legendary and fierce chieftain of the Cenomani Gauls, whose deeds were long handed down by word of mouth.
The hamlet of Barbata, on the slopes of Monte Cavlera, was born of something precise and grim: the mining of iron in the nearby val del Riso. It was first a place the slaves passed through — the damnati ad metalla, condemned to work in the mines — and then the place where those same slaves lived. Today Barbata and Bondo still keep a few residents, while almost everyone lives down on the valley floor along the Serio, in a built-up strip that twentieth-century building has fused without a break to the neighbouring villages: a long town that begins at Bergamo and ends here. Just to the north the valley narrows abruptly, and for five kilometres nothing more fits.
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📅 Every year, on 22 September
On 22 September Colzate celebrates Saint Maurice with religious and sporting events; in mid-July the town also holds "Colzate in festa", a week of sporting, recreational and cultural events.
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 Colzate, but an easy day trip away.
