Villa d'Almè

Villa d'Almè stands at the mouth of the Val Brembana, in the hinterland of Bergamo. The name first appears in documents of 1098 and comes from Lemine, the name of the district, later Lemen and then shortened to Almè; “Villa” meant a small settlement dependent on a higher authority, such as a plebeian church. The arms say the same: on a red field, three silver bendlets for the roads crossing the village, as in the arms of Almè, and at the centre a patrician villa with Ghibelline-merloned walls, recalling the name. In the fourteenth century the village and the hamlet of Bruntino sided with the Ghibelline party of Almè.

Under Venetian rule the village recovered thanks to small foundries making weapons for the Serenissima: on the Brembo, near the Campana hamlet, a cluster of houses is still called Fonderia. In the same years the via Priula, the new road from Bergamo to the Canton of Grisons, was opened; part of its old course survives here. In 1859 Giuseppe Garibaldi stayed at villa Locatelli Milesi seeking recruits for the expedition of the Thousand, and a marble plaque in its halls records it. In 1927 Villa d'Almè was merged with Almè and Bruntino into the comune of Almè con Villa; it became autonomous again in 1948.