Highlights of Brescia, Brescia, Italy

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 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.

To my eye, it has many attributes of an opera house or a grand theater, but is in fact only a town hall.

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. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).