CONVENTO DI SAN FRANCESCO

Inside, the Convent houses two multimedia and interactive museum routes: the Sestini Photography Museum and Bergamo 900.

The Sestini Museum of Photography offers an all-round experience in contact with the world of photography to learn about the origins, techniques and protagonists of this wonderful discovery. The itinerary, divided into a scientific and a historical part, presents the rich heritage of the Sestini Photographic Archive and is enriched by a gallery of original photographic equipment from the collections of the Museum of Bergamo History: magic lanterns, Rolleiflex, Leica, Polaroid, Zeiss and Kodak. Rare pieces of valuable variety are juxtaposed with digital innovations in a tale that traces the technological evolution of the most famous cameras. Among the striking exhibits is a unique example of a stereoscopic pillar viewer dating back to the early decades of the 20th century, richly carved in the form of a turret and consisting of a mechanism capable of holding around 150 stereoscopes. Two interactive tables, on the other hand, introduce the profession of the photographer in the 19th and 20th century by showing, through zenithal shots, hands grappling with the making of ferrotypes, collodion negative plates, albumen prints and the loading of rolls of film, their development and printing through an enlarger.

Bergamo 900 tells the story of the city and its territory in the 20th century. Immersive installations and new technologies restore the great key themes of the 20th century, cast in the local dimension. In the four thematic sections, sources and languages typical of the century, such as photography, audiovisuals and the heritage of objects from the collections of the Museum of Bergamo History and many other Italian archives illustrate the great transformations of the city and province. Eight video clips for eight major turning points of the twentieth century show the dynamics and processes of the century in their local precipitate; 87 places can be explored virtually on a large map of the city and province; 23 boxes of objects, accompanied by oral testimonies, recount small and large transformations of the century between local and international dimensions. Particularly noteworthy is the plastic model of the upper city, carved out of three blocks of solid walnut wood, which faithfully depicts the urban and morphological layout of Bergamo's historic heart in the mid-1930s, before the implementation of the Upper City Renovation Plan. Also significant is the display in turn of some of the most beautiful motorbikes made by Moto Rumi, which between 1950 and 1962 produced some of the models that have remained in the imagination of two-wheel enthusiasts in Italy and around the world, thanks to their attractive design, bright colours and undoubted technical quality.

The Convent of St. Francis is one of the six sites in the network of the Bergamo History Museum, a diffuse historical museum that tells the history of Bergamo, from Roman times to the 20th century.