New Radio Serina broadcasts from Serina, a town of roughly 2,100 people tucked into the Val Serina, a side valley off the Val Brembana in the mountains north of Bergamo, Lombardy. The station's tagline, "la musica è tutta intorno a noi, basta ascoltarla" ("music is all around us, we just need to listen"), fits a service built less around chasing a mass audience and more around staying woven into the daily life of a small alpine community.
Built Into Village Life
New Radio Serina's website reads less like a typical station homepage and more like a community bulletin board. Alongside its AAC+ stream, it runs a forum, a "Tra realtà e Fantasia" fiction section publishing local writers' short stories, and features tied to the Proloco Serina, the town's tourism association. Weather updates and regularly posted "Appunti" notes round out a format built for people who already know the town, not for a distant general audience.
Broadcasting From a Renaissance Painter's Hometown
Serina's most famous export left the valley more than five centuries before the station existed. Jacopo Negretti, known as Palma il Vecchio, was born here around 1480 to a family connected to the valley's shepherds and drovers, and like many locals of his era, left young for Venice. He went on to become one of the defining painters of the Venetian Renaissance, working alongside Titian and Lorenzo Lotto. Serina's parish church still holds works by Palma and his grandson Palma il Giovane, and the Venetian Republic itself once ran the upper Val Brembana from Serina, which served as the area's administrative seat until 1797.
A Small Valley, an Eclectic Playlist
Despite its size, New Radio Serina does not narrow its music to one lane, mixing Italian pop, rock, hip-hop, and classical across its schedule. Recent listens have turned up "Pensiero Stupendo" by Patty Pravo, the kind of enduring Italian pop standard that fits comfortably next to newer local talent in a playlist built for a general village audience rather than a single genre crowd.
Why Tune In
New Radio Serina is a good listen for anyone curious about small-scale Italian community radio done properly: a real local forum, tourism ties to the Proloco, and a playlist that ranges across Italian pop and beyond, all broadcast from a mountain town that once sent a shepherd's son to become one of Venice's great Renaissance painters.