Antico Ristorante Drago

The Drago's dates come from the restaurant itself. On the page it published on the oltreilcolle.com portal, preserved by the Internet Archive from 2006 to 2014, the management is traced generation by generation: Gerolamo Maurizio from 1870 to 1908, then his son Pietro, his grandson Pietro from 1954 to 1981 and from 1982 Paolo. An older version of the page, from 2002, gave 1863 instead as the start of the family's management; the regional register and today's advertisement use 1870, and the advertisement celebrates «1870-2010, 140 years of history».

As early as 2006 the restaurant wrote that it had been granted the Region's recognition as a historic business of local importance; in the current register its recognition as a historic venue is dated 2010. In July 2013 L'Eco di Bergamo published the list of the ninety historic shops and venues of the Bergamo area recognised by the Region, including the Ristorante Antico Drago of Oltre il Colle, 1870.

The sign is a winged dragon with seven heads. According to the restaurant it appears in a list of weights and measures from 1889 and in the book «Arti minori bergamasche» by the engineer Luigi Angelini, who stayed at the Drago from 1936 to 1938 while working on the parish church of San Bartolomeo and the cemetery. The drawing of a hearth that the restaurant reproduces in its advertisements is signed «L. Angelini 1935».

In the restaurant's description there are seventy seats in three small rooms: the Sala del Camino (fireplace room), the Sala delle Stampe (prints room) and the Saletta della Ghiacciaia (ice-house room). The first has the original fireplace, partly in stone, and a collection of 95 pieces of antique copperware; the second the late nineteenth-century prints of Vittorio Emanuele, Cavour and Napoleon, a sideboard in Bergamo walnut from 1760 and a wall cabinet from 1880.

The third room is named after the old ice house discovered when the wooden floor was lifted during a restoration partly funded by the Region: it has been left visible under a glass hatch, beneath a stone vault that was brought back to light. Among the furnishings the restaurant also lists walnut tables from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the original walnut and cherry doors with cast-iron knockers shaped like hands, and a telephone from 1907: until 1970, the same page recalls, the village's public telephone was here.

There is no up-to-date menu online. In 2002 the restaurant named game with polenta as its typical dish, and the last daily menu it put online, in 2013, included casoncelli alla bergamasca, tagliolini with porcini mushrooms, gnocchi with gorgonzola and walnuts, braised beef with polenta, oven-roasted local rabbit, donkey stew with polenta, polenta taragna with sausage and eggs with polenta and cheese; among the starters local salami, herb-cured lard and venison ham, among the cheeses strachì tund and goat's formagella, among the desserts plums in grappa.

These are indications from thirteen years ago, not today's menu: dishes and prices should be asked on the phone. The restaurant offers set menus on request, and this year it was chosen for village occasions: it was a participating venue for the Pro Loco's carnival lunch on 14 February 2026 and for the dinner on 21 February, and the council entrusted it with the Ecology Day lunch on 24 May.

No source publishes current opening hours. On the restaurant's pages from 2002, 2006 and 2014 the closing day was Tuesday, and in 2002 the Drago said it was open all year round: old information, to be checked before you go up.

To book there are the landline 0345 95006 and the mobile 328 2118844, both printed in the 2026 advertisement with the words «bookings welcome»; the landline is the same one given by the council and the Pro Loco. The oltreilcolle.com website named in the advertisement could not be reached on 1 October 2026.

The address published by the restaurant and recorded by the Region is via Roma 520; the council's list of public premises gives via Roma 256 instead, a number that does not appear in the national register of house numbers for Oltre il Colle, while 520 does. In the same council list, number 520 is assigned to the Pub Aurora: the sources do not make it possible to say whether the two premises share a building or one of them is wrong. The point on the map is the one georeferenced by the Region, in the eastern part of the main village, about 200 metres from piazza Tiraboschi as the crow flies.

From the line B stop in piazza Tiraboschi you walk along via Roma. For dinner, though, the bus is no use: the line runs Monday to Saturday only, and in the timetable valid from 14 September 2026 the last bus towards Zogno leaves piazza Tiraboschi at 17:03. By car, the nearest free public car park mapped by OpenStreetMap is towards Piazzale degli Alpini, about 300 metres away as the crow flies.

Nearby, about seventy metres away, is the council playground on via Roma; the B&B Drago 48, on via Drago, is about sixty metres away. Among the places in the centre, the Café Carrara is about 200 metres away and the La Fonte ice-cream shop about 230.