The first document that names the village is from 1194, a deed of investiture in which the borgo of Olmo appears; the name comes from Ulmus, the elm, which then grew here in quantity. Earlier still the territory, within the Holy Roman Empire, had been given by Charlemagne to the monks of the abbey of Tours; then it passed to the Della Torre, who also held the Valsassina, and then to the Visconti, who granted special statutes, tax relief and a great deal of autonomy. Venice confirmed the privileges and added a road: the via Priula, which linked Bergamo directly with the Grisons. At Malpasso stood the customs post for those coming down from the San Marco pass, and it worked until the end of the 19th century. The present name, Olmo al Brembo, dates from 1863.
In those centuries the longest-resident families joined in a Società degli Originari. The reason was practical: when an outsider bought land in the comune, the originari meant to go on gathering wood, cutting hay and pasturing their animals on those fields, as they always had. Ownership changed, use stayed. Above the village stands the sanctuary of the Madonna dei Campelli, of the 17th century: it was built around a stone on which a traveller, thrown from his horse and saved from a precipice after calling on the Virgin, had had her image painted. In the old borgo the porticoed lanes still have a Venetian air.
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📅 Every year, on 17 January
On 17 January Olmo al Brembo celebrates its patron Saint Anthony the Abbot, to whom the town's church is dedicated; the Santuario della Beata Vergine dei Campelli is also here.
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 Olmo al Brembo, but an easy day trip away.
