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BRESCIA |
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Famed for its arms industry and chill Fascist-era piazza, BRESCIA is
a rather ugly industrial town and one that is, unsurprisingly, not on
most travellers' itineraries - although you may pass through on the way
to Venice or up to the lakes. If you do, the architectural contrasts of
its disjointed centre may provide some temporary light relief, but your
overall impression will most likely be a negative one.
The City
Brescia's centre is grouped around the four piazzas beyond the main
Corso Palestro. Piazza del Mercato is a sprawling cobbled square of more
interest to the stomach than the eye - there's a weekday market, a
supermarket, and small shops selling local salamis and cheeses nestling
under its dark porticoes. Piazza della Vittoria is quite different, a
disquieting reminder of the Fascist regime embodied in the clinical
austerity of Piacentrini's gleaming marble rectangles. The arcades,
boutiques, gelaterie and pasticcerie ensure that the square is well
frequented in the passeggiata hour.
Alongside the post office, Via 24 Maggio leads to Brescia's prettiest
square, Piazza della Loggia , dating back to the fifteenth century, when
the city invited Venice in to rule and protect it from Milan's power-hungry
Viscontis. The Venetian influence is clearest in the fancily festooned
Loggia , in which both Palladio and Titian had a hand, and in the Torre
dell'Orologio , modelled on the campanile in Venice's Piazza San Marco.
In the northeast corner is the Porta Bruciata , a defensive medieval
tower-gate, which in 1974, as part of the Strategy of Tension, was the
scene of a Fascist bomb attack during a left-wing march, in which eight
people were killed and over a hundred injured.
To the south of Porta Bruciata, a small side street leads to Piazza
Paolo VI , one of the few squares in Italy to have two cathedrals -
though, frankly, it would have been better off without the second, a
heavy Mannerist monument that took over two hundred years to complete.
The old twelfth-century cathedral, or Rotonda (April-Oct daily except
Tues 9am-noon & 3-7pm; Nov-March Sat & Sun 10am-noon & 3-6pm), is quite
a different matter, a simple circular building of local stone, whose
fine proportions are sadly difficult to appreciate from the outside as
it is sunk below the current level of the piazza. Inside, glass set into
the transept pavement reveals the remains of Roman baths (a wall and
geometrical mosaics) and the apse of an eighth-century basilica which
burned down in 1097. Most interesting is the fine red marble tomb of
Berardo Maggi, a thirteenth-century Bishop of Brescia, opposite the
entrance, decorated on one side with a full-length relief of the cleric,
on the other by reliefs showing other ecclesiasts and dignitaries
processing through a lively crowd of citizens to celebrate the peace
Maggi had brought to the town's rival Guelph and Ghibelline factions.
Behind Piazza del Duomo, Via Mazzini leads to Via dei Musei, along which
lie the remains of the Roman town of Brixia, though there's not a lot to
see. There's a theatre , currently in the process of excavation and
visible only through a wire fence, but the most substantial monument is
the Capitolino, a Roman temple built in 73 AD, now reconstructed with
red brick. Unfortunately it is presently closed for restoration work (call
030.377.4999 for latest details). Behind the temple are three
reconstructed celle , probably temples to the Capitoline trinity of
Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, which now house fragments of carved funerary
monuments and mosaic pavements.
Further along Via dei Musei, the abbey of San Salvatore e Santa Giulia (Tues-Sun:
June-Sept 10am-5pm; Oct-May 9.30am-1pm & 2.30-5pm; L5000/¬2.58) thrived
from the eighth century until it was suppressed in 1798. It's currently
undergoing restoration and a consequent reshuffle of its museum exhibits,
so only certain sections will be open, although the most important
pieces should be on display somewhere. Inside are three churches, the
oldest being San Salvatore , whose present structure dates back to the
twelfth century but includes the remains of an original crypt built in
762 to house the relics of St Julia. Santa Maria in Solario , built in
the twelfth century as a private chapel for the Benedictine nuns who
lived at the abbey, is covered in frescoes painted mainly by Floriano
Ferramola during the early 16th century (various dates are visible).
Those in the central apse show the marriage of St Catherine to the baby
Jesus - a clear reference to the nuns' spiritual marriage to God - while
St Scolastica, St Benedict's sister, makes several appearances in her
capacity as patron saint to the Benedictine nuns. St Julia's
particularly gruesome tale - strung from a tree by her own hair, her
breasts were then cut off, from which sprang two angels - is depicted on
the left wall. The late-sixteenth-century church of Santa Giulia is not
as interesting but does contain further frescoes by Ferramola.
Churches aside, the complex also houses the civic museum , which,
although still in the process of coming together, is the culmination of
the work done by two of Brescia's major museums. The Roman museum has
jewellery, glassware, sculptures and bronzes, fragments of mosaic
pavements and a life-sized winged Victory . The prize exhibits at the
museum of Christian art include a fourth-century ivory reliquary chest
carved with lively biblical scenes and an eighth-century crucifix
presented to the convent by Desiderius, King of the Lombards - made of
wood overlaid with silver and encrusted with over two hundred gems and
cameos. Look also at the remains of the Byzantine Basilica of San
Salvatore and the remnants of the Roman villa , which have been found
under a large part of the abbey; those mosaics that are visible are in a
beautiful state of preservation.
Behind the museum, Via Piamarta climbs up the Cydnean Hill , the core of
early Roman Brixia, mentioned by Catullus, though again the remains are
scanty. There are a few fragments of a gate just before you reach the
sixteenth-century church of San Pietro in Oliveto , so called because of
the olive grove surrounding it, and the hill itself is crowned by the
Castello - a monument to Brescia's various overlords, begun in the
fifteenth century by Luchino Visconti and added to by the Venetians,
French and Austrians over the years. The resultant confusion of towers,
ramparts, halls and courtyards makes a good place for an atmospheric
picnic, and holds a complex of museums including Italy's largest museum
of arms, the Museo del Risorgimento and a model railway museum
(Tues-Sun: June-Sept 10am-5pm; Oct-May 9.30am-1pm & 2.30-5pm:
L5000/¬2.58).
More appealing perhaps is Brescia's main art gallery, the Pinacoteca
Tosio-Martinengo (Tues-Sun: June-Sept 10am-5pm; Oct-May 9.30am-1pm &
2.30-5pm; L5000/¬2.58), which consists of a well laid-out collection
mainly made up of the works of minor local artists, including a
beautiful black Sant'Apollonia by Vincenzo Foppa. The rooms devoted to
the "Nativity" and "Town and Province" are worth a look, as are those of
the seventeenth-century realist Ceruti, who, unusually for his time,
specialized in painting the poor .
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