COUNTRY HISTORY
Camerata Cornello is one of the oldest villages in the Brembana Valley. It is presumable, even if there is no documentary evidence, that the first inhabited nuclei were already formed in the early Middle Ages following the barbarian invasions that forced the people of the city to take refuge in the less accessible valleys.
The first written testimonies about the town date back to the year 1000. The most ancient toponym of which we have news concerns the town of Cespedosio, Cespedusso, mentioned in a capitular parchment of 1093. The first mention of Camarata dates back to 1181 and in other documents of the same period there are also the names of Cornello, Bruga, Darco, Orbrembo and Brembella. As for the toponym "Camerata", the etymology is uncertain and can be traced back to the presence in the area of a fortified building with arched openings.
Initially the history of these small communities did not differ at all from that of the other villages in the Brembana Valley subjected to the feudal regime of the bishops of Bergamo; then in the communal period the village belonged for a certain period to the municipality of San Pietro d'Orzio from which it became autonomous during the fourteenth century.
When the Visconti dominion was established in Bergamo, Camerata was included in the vicariate of Val Brembana Superiore and remained there for all the centuries of Venetian domination (1428-1797).
At the end of the sixteenth century, according to a report by Giovanni Da Lezze, the town had 320 souls, divided into 73 families. At that time the chief town was Cornello, whose importance as a market place and place of transit along the Via Mercatourm had grown considerably in previous centuries.
Alongside commercial activities, the town was devoted to agriculture and animal husbandry. Some mills and wool processing plants completed the economic picture of a community that drew every source of livelihood from within.
The life of the village did not change appreciably until the end of the Venetian domination (1797).
Great economic and social difficulties took over instead in the nineteenth century, under French and Austrian domination and then with the new Kingdom of Italy.
(Source: Tarcisio Bottani, Camerata Cornello da Vivere, Camerata Cornello, 2000).
Italian