Osteria Tre Gobbi Restaurant

At a glance

Type

Historic osteria and trattoria, still trading

Where

Via Broseta 20/C, 24122 Bergamo, Lombardy

Coordinates

45.6928° N, 9.6623° E

Opened

disputed — see below

Known for

Gaetano Donizetti, who was a regular in the 1830s and 1840s

The sign

Three smiling hunchbacks — tre gobbi — in wrought iron

Overview

The trattoria stands in via Broseta, in Borgo San Leonardo, near the church of San Rocco — the district of the Cinque Vie, below the walled upper town, where Bergamo did its trading rather than its governing. In the first decades of the nineteenth century the quarter had two cafés and an osteria: the Caffè degli Amici, and the Tre Gobbi.

History

The innkeeper was Michele Bettinelli (1792–1868), described by those who knew him as a small, ruddy, open-faced man. He had grown up with Gaetano Donizetti and had shared his early theatre years; when the composer returned to Bergamo from Milan he gathered here with the maestro Simone Mayr, the painter Luigi Deleidi and the tenor Dolci, and Bettinelli cooked him the classic Bergamasque dish, polenta e uccelli. He spoke of the composer as “his Gaetano”, and after Donizetti’s death in 1848 he gave up the inn, ending his days in the household of the tenor Tiberini. Popular tradition also remembers the osteria as a safe meeting place for carbonari conspiring against Austrian rule. The account comes from an article by Sereno Locatelli Milesi published in Emporium in 1932.

On the founding date the sources do not agree, and it is worth being plain about it. The guides of today, including that of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, give 1855 — but 1855 is seven years after Donizetti’s death, and cannot be reconciled with the story that is the inn’s whole claim to fame. The historical account has the Tre Gobbi already trading under Bettinelli in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and the Cultural Heritage Online archive entry goes further back still, to the end of the eighteenth century. Without a document — a licence, a land register entry, a deed — none of the three can be preferred, and 1855 is most likely the date of a transfer or of a licence rather than of a beginning.

The house has been run since 2017 by Marco Carminati, joined in the autumn of 2020 by the chef Filippo Cammarata, in what the two describe as a contemporary osteria: the cooking has changed, the address has not. In 2018 the Tre Gobbi took part in the eighth episode of the fourth season of Alessandro Borghese’s 4 Ristoranti, on contemporary Bergamasque cooking, against Benigni Ambulatorio — which won — La Tana and Lalimentari. The programme is 4 Ristoranti, in which the chef Alessandro Borghese has four restaurants of the same kind judge one another on premises, menu, service and bill before he casts the deciding vote.

What you see

One long rectangular room with two entrances on two parallel streets, via Broseta and vicolo San Lazzaro. That is the plan of the old nineteenth-century osteria, and it is also the reason for the conspirators’ story: a house with two doors on two streets gave better odds of getting out if the police came in. On the San Lazzaro side one used to leave by a wooden bridge over the Rio Roggia Serio, the watercourse now culverted for the whole length of the lane as far as the church of San Lazzaro.

The fittings and the upper rooms — once part of the inn — have changed substantially, but the front has not. The archive entry describes the sign reading ANTICA TRATTORIA AI TRE GOBBI, the iron and cast-iron shutters, and the decorated cast-iron door with glass panels, finished with a brass handle bearing the name Giovanni Busetti Bergamo — the foundry that made it at the end of the nineteenth century. Outside hangs the wrought-iron sign with the three plump, smiling hunchbacks that give the house its name.

Practical information

• Via Broseta 20/C, Bergamo. The osteria is still trading; opening days have changed with the management, so check the current ones before going.
• There are around forty-five covers inside and as many outside.

Sources

• Osteria Tre Gobbi, official site: tregobbi.it
• Accademia Italiana della Cucina — guide entry for the Antica Trattoria ai Tre Gobbi.
• Bergamo da scoprire, 2 December 2018 — “L’Osteria dei Tre Gobbi, il rifugio amato da Gaetano Donizetti”, drawing on Sereno Locatelli Milesi in Emporium, 1932.
• Cultural Heritage Online historical archive — original Italian entry on beniculturalionline.it, verified and rewritten in August 2026.