The Headquarters of the Bergamo Chamber of Commerce, from 1802 to 1925

The primary Chamber of Commerce of Bergamo was established by the law of August 26, 1802. The Chamber's structure was not established definitively until a few years later. During its first few months of activity, meetings of the Chamber of Commerce were held in the great hall of the Palazzo Civico, the civic building (currently the home of the Angelo Mai Library). But this was only a temporary solution. In fact, the Chamber of Commerce was eventually transferred to a building on via Aquila Nera, where it remained from 1804 to 1809 when it was finally moved to an establishment in the lower district of the city. This decision was hotly contested because nobody had ever questioned its location in the city's historical district where within a few yards of each other stood the most influential civic and religious institutions in Bergamo. The discussions revealed that some businessmen were entirely against the idea of moving the Chamber of Commerce to the burg, concerned that in time the city would lose its "old prestige".

It should be recalled that in 1797 the Revenue Office and the Post Office had already been transferred to the lower city where "because of their peculiar tasks, they are better situated in the burg where the transit merchandise is processed and the mail carriers make their relays".
On April 11, 1809 the offices of the Chamber of Commerce found a home in the Saint Bartholomew district, in the offices previously occupied by the Chancellery of the Convent. This was an historic decision that led to the transferring of the political-administrative heart of the city to the lower districts of Bergamo. Of course, the decision to move the Revenue Office, the Customs Office, the Medicinal Salts Dispensary, the Post Office and the Chamber of Commerce closer to the Fair had not been a casual one. The Fair had become the worldwide symbol of the productive and commercial dynamism of Bergamask businessmen. Years earlier it had served as a pole of attraction for the construction of the Teatro Riccardi. At first the Chamber of Commerce rented the offices, buying them a few years later, in 1810, for 14,326 Lira. Renovations to beautify and improve the building's safety and hygiene standards commenced years later, in 1821. In 1825, thanks to a grant obtained from the Cassa di Risparmio di Milano, work began on architect Giovanni Francesco Lucchini's project. The building underwent a number of expansions, from elevating the two stories, to the division of the interior space, to the installation of the Board Room.
By the late 19th century, the transfer of the main administrative buildings, which had begun with the Chamber of Commerce, had altered the administrative and economic position of the burg. Some of the Fair structures, which were in poor condition following the decline of the area as a place of exchange, had been transformed into permanent boutiques, and were seen more and more as useless clutter that paralyzed the heart of the area where new housing, industries and services were cropping up.
With this in mind, public authorities opted for a radically innovative city planning program. The current look of the city center - the area comprised within the Sentierone, Piazza Vittorio Veneto, viale Roma, viale Vittorio Emmanuele II, piazza Libertà, and Largo Belotti - resulted from the competitions announced in 1906-07. In the end, the area was planned by the then twenty-five year old Roman architect Marcello Piacentini, who went on to become the controversial protagonist of Italian architecture in the era between the two world wars.
In those years, the Chamber of Commerce - as an expression of Bergamo's developing entrepreneurial spirit - was assuming an increasingly significant role in the city, and throughout the province. At the root of all this lied both the growth of the business sector and the authoritative pull of the figures who had assumed the presidency of the Chamber during those years. As a result, when the City was finally able to give the go ahead on the Piacentini project to restructure the city center, it had become obvious that the Chamber of Commerce required more ample and prestigious offices. Seeing as the city lacked these kinds of accommodations, the Chamber administrators decided to have new offices built on the old fairgrounds. The land was purchased in 1921, and the project for the new building was assigned to Luigi Angelini, as he was Piacentini's representative in Bergamo and the new building was to be stylistically similar to the buildings Piacentini had already built on the fairgrounds.
An external consultant was then brought in to select the subjects that would be depicted in the fanlights of the Board Room, chosen as the most representative setting of the entire building. Initially, the Chamber Commission had chosen depictions of some of the province's ancient and recent economic activities. But they idea had to abandon due to the difficulty of artistically representing such activities. So they decided on a selection of the most "evocative and characteristic landscapes of the province in regards to the various zones of the same". The construction of the new building, which began in May 1923, was achieved two years later, just in time for the visit to Bergamo of King Vittorio Emanuele III on November 1, 1925, who attended the inauguration ceremony.
The inauguration ceremony was a solemn occasion, testifying to the importance of the "Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Province of Bergamo", whose spacious offices overlook the area in which exotic buyers and gold artisans once haggled. The new building, which faces the piazza dedicated to Dante Alighieri, where both the Bank and the Justice Department found homes next to the Chamber, dominates both the Lower City and Upper City. The gap between the two has now faded. The city now has one soul, which works in silence towards a faith that looks to the future of Italy, spurred by the warning that descends around the Torre dei Caduti."