Just outside the small village of San Martino della Battaglia, a few kilometres south of Lake Garda, we find a remarkable monument from the nineteenth century. The monumental tower closely resembles a chess piece and honours the memory of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a united Italy, who…
Modern Solferino is a charming little town about ten kilometres south of Lake Garda. In this peaceful region of extensive vineyards that have sprung up around the town, it is hard to imagine that on 24 June 1859 one of the bloodiest battles in Italian history was fought here. On…
The conspicuous neo-classicist façade of the church of Sant’Agata will lead many visitors to conclude that the church was built fairly recently. It was not. Construction of the church started as early as 1077, some thirty years before that of the Duomo of Cremona. In 1223 the Sant’Agata was thoroughly…
Cremona’s civic museum is housed in the Palazzo Affaitati, which was built between 1561 and 1572. It is named after marquess Giuseppe Sigismondo Ala Ponzone, who in 1842 donated his art collection to the city. This collection is the nucleus of the current museum collection, but the museum also has…
The church of Sant’Agostino is an enormous brick building from the fourteenth century. The church stands on the Via Breda, and the name of this street gives a clue about the predecessor of the church. This previous church was the San Giacomo in Braida, with the Germanic word braida meaning…
The beautiful octagonal Baptistery of Cremona can be found next to the cathedral, on the south side of the Piazza del Comune. Construction of the building started in the year 1167 under the direction of an unknown architect. The design is sometimes attributed to a certain Teodosio Orlandino, but there…
The Duomo of Cremona, also known as the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, is undoubtedly the most famous building of the city. Almost every person living in the Netherlands knows it, if only because the cathedral and adjacent Baptistery feature prominently in a De’Longhi coffee commercial. The setting of the…
We know very little about the life of the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84-54 BCE), but there is no doubt that he and Sirmione were close. In his Carmen 31, Catullus mentions the town: “O Sirmio, little eye of peninsulas and of islands, whatever in shining lakes or…
The Santa Maria Maggiore, also known as the Santa Maria della Neve, is a parish church in the centre of Sirmione. It is difficult to establish how old exactly the church is, but construction of the current Santa Maria Maggiore took place between the second half of the fifteenth century…
If you visit Sirmione, the pearl of Lake Garda, it is certainly hard to miss the castle of the town, the Rocca Scaligera. Sirmione is situated on a promontory which extends into the lake and which is, from north to south, about four kilometres long. The last kilometre or so…
There are many reasons to consider the small church of San Pietro in Mavino to be the highlight of Sirmione. First of all, it literally occupies a high spot, as it was built at the top of a hill near the end of the promontory on which Sirmione is situated.…
Brescia’s Castello, perched high on the Colle Cidneo in the city centre, lost its defensive function long ago. The castle is a city park nowadays, where one can go for a stroll or enjoy a panoramic view of Lombardy’s second city. On the premises we also find several museums and…
It must have been one of the most beautiful buildings in Colonia Civica Augusta Brixia: the Capitolium of the town, i.e. the temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva on the northern side of the Roman forum. When the first excavations were launched at this spot in 1823, only one column…
If there is one thing I have discovered about Brescia, then it must be that it is a great city to go for a stroll. And that is exactly what I am going to do in this post: present my readers with a written stroll through the centre of Brescia.…
As Brescia’s municipal museum, the Museo di Santa Giulia is all about the city’s own history. In part 4 of this series about the museum, I will take stock of several museum objects and use them to discuss the history of Brescia. Brescia in Antiquity is the main subject of…
Part 3 of the series about the Museo di Santa Giulia in Brescia is dedicated to the nuns’ choir (Coro delle Monache), which has been built against the eighth century church of San Salvatore. Construction of the choir was closely related to reforms within the Benedictine Order in the fifteenth…
In the second part of this series about the Museo di Santa Giulia in Brescia I will discuss the oratory of Santa Maria in Solario. This square edifice dates from the twelfth century and was built in the Romanesque style. Its splendid octagonal dome with colonnades just below the eaves…
The Museo di Santa Giulia is Brescia’s municipal museum. It can be found in the enormous monastic complex of San Salvatore-Santa Giulia, which in 2011 was added to UNESCO’s list of world heritage as one of the seven Longobard Places of Power.[1] It should not come as a surprise that…
The history of the church of Santa Maria della Carità is closely connected to the Brescian noblewoman Laura Gambara (ca. 1490-1549). She spent a large part of her life tending to the needs of vulnerable women. And there were plenty of vulnerable women to protect, for the years after the…
The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and the adjacent eponymous sanctuary (santuario) are of great importance to the citizens of Brescia. It was in the sanctuary that a certain Giovanni Battista Montini, just 22 years old and only recently ordained a priest, celebrated his first mass in 1920. In…