IT is a typical Italian small-town scene, a Saturday market with the locals selling their olive oils, foods and flowers from the stalls.

A queue is snaking around the piazza. The setting, classic colonnades and fountains, is deserving of an open-air aria.

Only this is Bergamo 2020 and the new normal is long lines of people assembling around a Covid-19 centre.

A photographic exhibition is laid out on boards behind, chronicling the pandemic. All human life is captured here on the screens – rich, poor, old, young, doctor, patient, the newly born and the not long for this world.

We are eight months on from the height of the pandemic when the Northern Italian town was at the epicentre of the virus, with the highest rates of the disease in the world.

And the Bergamaschi do not want to go back there.

My Visit Bergamo guide, Matteo, remembers the only sounds back in March, when Bergamo was quarantined from the world, were of screaming sirens as ambulances raced around town and with helicopters whirring overhead.

My guide tells a story of our times of a citizen stuck in the house helpless with his Covid-hit ageing father.

He saw a report on the TV of a man who had died in the nearby town of Brescia and had left a half a tank of oxygen behind unused.

The loving, desperate son made his way to Brescia, asked, and found, where the man had lived and was given the tank.

Despite his best efforts he could not save his father.

He is one of thousands who saw loved ones die from the virus which the Bergamaschi have had to learn to live with.

And if that means preparing for another lockdown, and a Christmas one at that, then the Bergamaschi are better prepared this time.

Christophe Sanchez, CEO of Visit Bergamo, accepts that his city, like the rest of Europe, is now having to face down a second wave.

When I visited last weekend, I found Bergamo waking to the news of rising figures, with the headline number that of 68 children infected in its schools.

But Bergamo, Covid’s first European target, is primed. It recognises its assailant better now and has learned how to confront it.

Sanchez said: “In Bergamo we had a very catastrophic pandemic during March and people know the problem. A lot of people died.

“And so the attitude of the people is very different. We pay a lot of attention.

“In Bergamo we are better prepared now because of what we went through.

“The problem is that the pandemic is exponential. The problem is when the hospital is full.”

The Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital took the brunt of patients during the first wave. But with another new hospital now built to meet any second wave, and new systems in place to protect lives, Bergamo is ready for whatever lies in store.

Sanchez added: “In July we offered to all of the people in Bergamo free of charge the possibility to test themselves to see if they had contracted the virus.

“I think we were the only ones to do this so we had the exact idea what happened to us. And I think we will use that again.

“Many scientists think we will be in lockdown during Christmas.

“The difference now though is that while in March only the doctor had a mask, now we all have masks, tens of them each.

“And the lockdown, if it comes, would be an economic choice too, because the schools are closed and people are on vacation. It is an option.”

BUT that is for Natale, Christmas. And while the Bergamaschi can enjoy, and make the most of their historic and cultural city, they will.

Outside the city hall the citizens still do everything they always have, albeit now at a safe distance, and in their masks.

Being Italian, of course, they carry the look with style and they are no less communicative for being muzzled – as, of course, Italians “parlano con le mani” or speak with their hands.

The weather helps too, so that you can eat and drink al fresco, while appreciating the splendours of a city that wears its Venetian, Milanese and Austro-Hungarian influences lightly.

They exert a proud independent Bergamascho identity, too.

Should the rainfall, or you wish to go inside, you’ll find the cafes and bars reassuringly relaxed at more than half occupancy. The hotel I made my billet for the weekend was more like two-thirds full.

The Bergamaschi have better cause than most to be making up for lost time now in this October Indian summer of theirs, particularly with the possibility of a Christmas circuit-breaker.

And they have much to entertain themselves with, and attract us, the tourist on which they are so reliant and which tour providers are working so assiduously with the city to provide.

They are hopeful of welcoming back tourists to the place the city fathers now herald “the safest place in Europe to visit”.

October in Bergamo and attention turns to Gaetano Donizetti operas and the titular November musical festival with Placido Domingo.

At the time of visiting they were preparing to re-open the opera house to entertain hundreds of lucky music lovers – although, of course, they would love to be able to entertain thousands.

They instead intend to make a drama out of a crisis by turning the cheap seats into the stage and play to the boxes. Ingenious.

If football, or calcio, is your theatre, the passionate supporters of the local football team Atalanta have even been able to attend matches as the city has emerged from the first wave.

Football is of course Italy’s other religion, although in these changing times, religion is their first.

They glorify God everywhere, although Giuseppe Garibaldi and Donazetti run him close, with the Italian revolutionary having drawn 200 proud Bergamo citizens to his side for the March to Rome, during the Risorgimento which sparked Italian unification.

A STATUE is erected to their favourite composer on an island in a city-centre pond, while you can also pay homage to him by visiting his birthplace and his final resting spot in Alta.

It is a suitably ornate remembrance in the Basilica in Alta where the cherubs are engraved discarding their instruments because the music has died.

Whether you’re religious or not, you’ll be drawn to the art in the Accademia Carrara in Bassa, with its Titian, Botticelli, Canaletto and Lotto works.

Art is all about enjoyment at a distance anyway. They throw their doors open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Every picture, they say, tells a story and the frescoes and paintings in the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore not only inspire and celebrate Our Lord, Our Lady and the Communion of Saints – they also served to educate the citizens in the stories from the Good Book in intricate detail.

Among them are images of the parting of the Red Sea, David and Goliath and Noah and the Deluge.

They are redemptive tales for the ages, as hopeful for today as they were in the 12th century.

The Bergamaschi built a new grand basilica on Piazza del Duomo, on the site of the previous church, to thank Our Lady and God for delivering them … from a plague.

Jim Murty travelled to Bergamo in Lombardy, Northern Italy, with Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) from Edinburgh, and was a guest of Visit Bergamo (https://www.visitbergamo.net/en/) and Omio (https://www.omio.co.uk/travel/bergamo). He stayed at the Hotel Excelsior San Marco (www.hotelsanmarco.com/en).

See websites for best rates.

Omio has “adopted” Bergamo as a city through the crisis and commits cash to Bergamo Support Fund based on customer bookings to Bergamo made through to December 2020.

You will need a negative test with results within 72 hours of take-off before you can travel to Italy.

Bergamo was taken off Scotland’s exempt list for visitors returning from Italy last week. That means you will have to self-isolate for a fortnight on your return.