San Pellegrino Terme

San Pellegrino Terme is the most architecturally complete Liberty-era (Italian Art Nouveau) spa town in northern Italy. The whole ensemble was built between 1899 and 1907 along a single bend of the Brembo river, where mineral and sulfur springs had been documented since the 13th century but only commercialised after the railway from Bergamo reached the valley. The set piece is the Grand Hotel — Liberty facade with cast-iron and stained-glass detail, designed by Romolo Squadrelli — set across the river from the equally-elaborate Casinò Municipale and the Terme building itself. The spa source feeds today's QC Terme bath complex (a contemporary operator running the historic structure) and the bottling plant a kilometre downstream that produces the mineral water sold worldwide as Acqua San Pellegrino. Above the town, a small funicular climbs to the Vetta panoramic point on the ridge. The Val Brembana itself is one of Lombardia's Cittaslow-style slow-tourism valleys, with the Borghi-più-belli of Cornello dei Tasso fifteen kilometres north and a chain of cycling routes along the river.