Processi di risignificazione e rigenerazione della corona dei Corpi Santi di Bergamo

The fringes of urban areas, before being defined suburbs, constituted places of excellence of the city for the presence of villas, noble palaces, sacred buildings characterized by specific agrarian landscapes aimed at supplying the urban market. They were also the places of productive experimentations and important agricultural land raclamation. The geo-historical analysis allows the recovery of these aspects rarely considered in contemporary planning. The contribution describes the characteristics of Corpi Santi the historic suburbs of the Lombard cities. In particular we analyze the case of the city of Bergamo, which, thanks to a series of political and administrative choices, has been able to safeguard the environmental, landscape and historical-architectural aspects of the hilly suburbs, thanks also to the establishment of the Regional Park dei Colli di Bergamo. Currently, other regeneration and re-signification processes are taking place which affect, in addition to the northern suburbs of the city, also the areas to the south, which are more compromised by twentieth-century urban development. The factors that favored these dynamics, generating new centralities for urban margins, are analyzed in a fully reticular and polycentric city perspective.