Gaetano Donizetti was born in Bergamo in the province of Lombardy on 29 November 1797. His baptismal certificate, dated 3 December 1797, is to be found among the parish records of Santa Grata inter Vites, the church that stands not a stone's throw from the house in which he was born. The notice reads:

At the time of Gaetano's birth his parents had been living for about eleven years in the basement apartment at Borgo Canale, no. 10 (now renumbered 14), a street that slants down the north-west shoulder of the hill occupied by the old town of Bergamo Alta. Today the house is marked by a plaque and has been designated a national museum. The dark, cramped quarters eloquently testify to the poverty in which the family lived. Donizetti never forgot the place. He described it a few years before his death in a letter to his teacher and benefactor Simon Mayr: ‘I was born underground in Borgo Canale. You went down cellar steps, where no glimmer of light ever penetrated. And like an owl I took flight… never encouraged by my poor father, who was always telling me: it is impossible that you will compose, that you will go to Naples, that you will go to Vienna.’