Gorle

Gorle lies on the west bank of the Serio, which traces its boundary, and borders Bergamo itself. The name seems to come from a Germanic form, Gorolis, then Gorole; another theory traces it to the Latin gurgula, a whirlpool. The bridge to Scanzorosciate bears the name of Ancus Marcius, fourth king of Rome: today's crossing is a rebuilding, but the old foundations survive. The place is first named in a ninth-century document.

The castle goes back to about the eleventh century, built as a collective fortification by several local landowners; it later passed to the bishops of Bergamo, who summered here until the early nineteenth century. In the sixteenth century bishop Gerolamo Regazzoni had a wing rebuilt and added a villa, finished in 1588, with Roman tombs in its cellars. Napoleonic confiscation sent villa and lands to the Zavaritt, silk merchants from Switzerland, who own them still. The arms show a silver tower with Ghibelline merlons on green ground, crossed at the foot by water.