As mentioned in the previous post about the Longobards World Heritage site, I was planning to acquaint myself with the city of Brescia in addition to my WH-chasing priorities. The Santa Giulia Museum and the archaeological site of Brixia Romana held my attention for nearly three hours combined. I wanted to leave myself a bit of sunlight for another location that same day, so I ended up limiting my exploration of Brescia to just a trio of central squares and their connecting streets in the city’s center.
The loveliest of the three is Piazza della Loggia.
The Renaissance buildings around the square are headlined by the early 16th-century Torre dell’Orologio.
The tower of Porta Bruciata (“the Burnt Door”) looks over the northeast corner of the piazza. In its current form, it dates from the 13th century.
That balcony on the side of the tower must have been a much more recent addition.
In this part of the square stands a lovely Monumento Bella Italia.
The opposite side is dominated by Palazzo della Loggia, completed in 1574.
To my eye, it has many attributes of an opera house or a grand theater, but is in fact only a town hall.
I left Piazza della Loggia through the gateway underneath the clock tower.
A few dozen steps in, I turned around and realized that the back side of the tower has its own clock face.
Piazza Duomo is another major public space in the city center. It is also known as Piazza Paolo VI in honor of the local son who was the Pope between 1963 and 1978. The two buildings dominating this square are the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta (aka, “the New Cathedral”), built in the 17th century, and the 12th-century Torre del Pégol.
The cathedral’s interior is relatively muted, as far as grand churches go.
Next to Duomo Nuovo stands Duomo Vecchio, a Romanesque church dating from the 12th century.
The interior of the Old Cathedral is more intriguing than that of its younger neighbor. To start with, the circular nave is quite a step down from the street-level entry.
The main altar was unfortunately covered in restoration scaffolding…
… but the ceiling, walls, and arches’ frescoes compensated for that several times over.
A view of the New Cathedral’s dome from the courtyard of Palazzo Broletto.
The decorative details found in this courtyard are of the kind that always attracts my attention.
Not too many other perspectives caught my eye on the relatively short walking loop in the center of Brescia.
Beyond the bend in the above perspective stands the church of Santa Maria della Carità. The Baroque exterior did not feel like anything special, and I ended up not even taking a picture of it. Inside, though, the church is rather exuberantly decorated.
Piazza della Vittoria was my entry-and-exit point to Brescia – there is a vast underground parking lot underneath it. The spacious square was built between 1927 and 1932 to replace parts of the demolished historic center, and is headlined by edifices such as Palazzo delle Poste, Torre della Rivoluzione, or Torrione INA.
In an inner courtyard known as Quadriportico della Vittoria, right off the square, you can find this unexpected piece.
This sculpture is called “The Weight of Suspended Time – Rhinoceros” and is apparently inspired by a scene from Federico Fellini’s film “And the Ship Sails On.” Curiously enough, it was loaned to the city by the sculptor for supposedly only two years following its unveiling in 2020, but somehow remains in place five years on.
Like any other larger town that I illustrated with photos in these pages, Brescia should be able to sustain a significantly longer exploration than I was able to allocate to it. There is a castle, a couple of museums that I would probably enjoy, and likely other routes through the historic center that pass by picturesque corners. On this limited impression, it would not be too far ahead in the queue of places to visit in Lombardy for someone who has not yet been in this region much before. But I am happy that I gained some familiarity with it.
This article is also featured on GPSmyCity. To download this article for offline reading or create a self-guided walking tour to visit the attractions highlighted in this article, go to Walking Tours and Articles in Brescia.