This city area changed a lot throughout the years: from a bad reputation area it recently had an important requalification and changed its social composition and now it’s one of the main young people night life centres in the city.
Contrada del Carmine has always been associated with soldiers and police, it is delimited by Porta Pile street and Saint Faustino street in the north, Battaglie street in the west, Mameli avenue in the south. Between the 12th and the 13th century it was an industrial and handcraft quarter, even if in the collective imagination it was seen as a disreputable place, linked to illegal activities as prostitution.
Once upon a time, in the area of the Carmine church, there was a little bridge that crossed the Bova torrent, now flowing in the subsoil, and an arch colonnade that now has only a column left, now included in the entrance of a pub. In the 90s the quarter has received immigrant populations, who, with their activities, have saved this area from the crisis. Nowadays it is a multi ethnic quarter, where orthodox, Waldensian, pentecostal and African churches coexist with Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist worship places.
In the early 2000s, the municipal administration launched the “Carmine Project” to promote requalification interventions, experiencing success in the social and building field, but failures from the commercial point of view. Today the area has become an important night life centre, so it’s not a surprise that Carmine won the prize as the best places in Italy, in the night life category in the “fun and pleasure guide 2013”.
Besides the bars and pubs, in the area there is the Carmine Church, the Photography Museum collecting objects and photos from the past, the old fountain formerly used to do the laundry, shops and taverns keeping alive the flavours and culinary tradition of Brescia, giving to all the area an unique and fascinating atmosphere.
PDF file download: Contrada del Carmine
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