Lombardy's Roman city and industrial shithole
Brescia is a dump. But it is a dump with some of the best Roman remains you'll find in Lombardy and that's why I was making this stop in a scruffy, industrial city on the way to my final destination, Bergamo. It isn't helped by the fact that I was still sick as a dog after the morning in Verona. I was feverish and vomiting out my arse and all I wanted to do was get to a hotel room and curl up.
Maybe that biased me. I was not in a great mood in Brescia. As Hemingway said, there were places that were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were there. Brescia was one of those places for me. Even so, it's not a nice place to arrive in. There is no question of that. The area around the station is poor and dirty. There are lots of people standing on street corners. A lot of drinking. A lot of shouting and fighting. And if you want to get into town then you need to navigate a fairly complicated route through that and the run-down housing schemes. It does not feel safe and I hurried through it. I checked my back a lot. Maybe my mental state was making me paranoid but I had to do a couple of detours when I thought I was being followed.
It is a long walk into the city centre. My first stop was the cathedrals but they were both closed until later so I headed to the Roman forum instead. And for a shitty north Italian town, it really was a sight worth seeing.
The Roman Forum isn't far from the square with the cathedrals. Cut down a nice little lane and you are there. You know you are getting close because you start seeing chunks of old Roman buildings reworked into relatively modern stuff. There's a small square on the left just before the forum where the surrounding tenements are all built on top of a Roman ground floor.
The Forum is at the top of the street this little square is off of. It's a little bit surreal to see the Capitoline temple looming up at you in amongst modern buildings. The other weird thing is that there are no people. Nobody. I know it's Sunday and the weather isn't great but still, this is a UNESCO World Heritage site. And it is a stunning place to visit.
There is a little ticket office on the left as you enter the park but honestly, the best of what there is to see is free to wander around. The most impressive parts are the temple and the amphitheatre and I only found out you could see them for free after I'd had to transit the most boring museum I'd been in for a long time.
The remains of the temple are very impressive but I'm not sure how much is original. The white marble is obviously Roman but the brown infill I am not so sure about.
The ticket to the museum gets you admission into some of the underground original rooms. They are interesting but you have to get the guided tour. It's very rare that I come out of a museum thinking "wow, that was worth all the time and money to see". I just don't enjoy museums and the only thing that makes the experience worse is if it is a guided tour.
There is an interesting video to set the scene which shows the rise and fall of the site over time. Then you are ushered into the rooms beyond which are lined with Roman frescoes. Don't get me wrong, they're beautiful, but you're stuck there until the guide has decided you have appreciated them for an appropriately long time. And that length of time is longer than I wanted.
Admittedly, what made it worse was getting shouted at for walking across 2000 year old mosaics in my size nines. What was I supposed to do? I was wandering about trying to look interested, not my fault I happened to be on top of one of the exhibits.
I was dying to get out and see the big stuff that I'd paid for. Eventually the guide released the door on the climate controlled air-lock and I damn near charged through it to escape. And that's when it hit me that I'd been through all that to get disgorged into the place I'd started where I could have gone without a ticket anyway. There was another section to the museum but I just could not face it so went to explore the rest of the archaeological park.
A little alleyway opens out into what was Roman Brescia's theatre. It's a big horseshoe shape in what looks like a natural hollow in the hillside that has been shored up with typical Roman masonry: natural stone with red banding every few courses. And the best part? Nobody there. I had the place to myself and it was great. Most of it is fenced off but you can still have a good rummage on your own. I loved it and was really reluctant to leave.
I never get used to finding Roman stuff in these incongruous locations. It's cold and damp and the skies are grey but Roman architecture always makes me think of sun and warmth and blue skies. It's the architecture of hot provinces that never really made any compromises for cold climates. It's the same throughout the northern Empire. Big, draughty halls, open porticoes, massive windows.
Five minutes east of the Roman forum is Brescia's other UNESCO World Heritage site, the monastery complex of San Salvatore and Santa Giulia. The place was founded by Desiderius, king of the Lombards (or as Pope Stephen called him, head of the filthy brood that brought leprosy to Italy). It's hard to see anything of it from the outside because it looks more like a fortress. It's just a big, blank stone wall running the length of the street with a few windows here and there. It's easy to think that, because it was a nunnery, the security is to keep randy locals out (for obvious reasons). But there must also have been the need to keep nuns in because a hell of a lot of them weren't there through choice. Back then, convents were as much prisons for "moral" crimes and awkward situations, like being considered a bit "past it" for finding a husband, as they were religious retreats. One of those was the wife of Charlemagne, Desiderata (daughter of King Desiderius), who ended up installed in here. Desiderata (or Gerperga, there's a lot of debate over who she really was) left the Holy Roman Emperor after a year and it's a fair guess neither Charlemagne nor King Desiderius were overly happy about it.
But the other reason these places always look like fortresses is the huge amount of wealth they held. It was founded by one of the most powerful kings in Europe for a start. When you see the scale of it and the quality of the artwork then it must have been pretty swanky. Swanky enough that King Alfred stayed there and was so impressed he modelled one of his own foundations on it.
The stonework of the external wall is quite interesting if you spend a moment looking at it. The blocks that make it up are clearly harvested from other buildings. You can see bits and pieces of out of place carvings and there are one or two chunks of inscriptions that can't be deliberate because they are placed at whatever angle suited. With the Roman forum so close, chances are the Lombard builders used the remains of it and if it had a nice polished face then it didn't really matter what else was carved into it.
The whole complex is, well, complex. It is really hard to find your way around. It's a collection of buildings that grew organically from the 700's, parts stuck on the side or plopped on top of others. The whole thing was built on top of Roman foundations.
One of the things that really struck me, what with this being a nunnery, was there are a lot of women with their boobs out in the artwork. Almost all of them are female martyrs undergoing some sort of torture with not a lot of clothes on, usually for refusing to give in to carnality. It's a nunnery so you would expect a lot of female imagery but you can't help thinking there is another message going on here.
Even the nunnery's patron saint, Santa Giulia herself (whose remains are housed here), was crucified in Carthage by Vandals. And one of the main artworks in the place is an image of that scene, Giulia topless and fixed to a cross.
In one of the chapels (the chapel of the boobies) is, what I think, the real treasure of the complex: a Lombard-era processional cross. I really love art from this period. There's something both primitive and beautiful about it, something organic that isn't seen again until the twentieth century and Art Nouveau.
The cross was commissioned by King Desiderius. It's wood plated with sheets of gold and inlaid with jewels. The jewels are part of what I find interesting. They are all random and re-used, you get a sense that the maker was shown the king's treasury and could take pieces to use. Melt down the gold, recover the jewels and re-set them. The cross must be the product of dozens of other older artefacts. There are even Roman portraits and cameos in amongst them. It makes me wonder if these pieces were plunder from Desiderius's campaigns. Or tribute. Or ransoms.
The bulk of the complex that is open to the public is a museum. And there's a hell of a lot of old stones. Miles and miles and miles of displays of old stones. Roman stones, Lombard stones, Ostrogoth stones, mediaeval stones... Stones. Admittedly, I was still feeling like shit and was getting even more tired now but it was boring the arse off me. Cynically, I wrote in my journal later: "why is this place a UNESCO site?". Because it is a beautiful place that is both historically and culturally important in the development of modern Lombardy, that's why, you arrogant prick.
Just to the west of San Salvatore is a steep hill that heads up towards a park. At the top there is a little church called San Cristo which has some beautiful frescoes. It was really quiet and felt off the beaten path but I thought it was worth a visit.
Brescia has two cathedrals: the new one, Il Duomo Nuovo, and the old one, Il Duomo Vecchio. They sit side by side in a square just to the west of the Roman forum. They are also known as the Summer Cathedral (new) and the Winter Cathedral (old).
The new cathedral is a big, grey Baroque lump that was only finished in the nineteenth century but was started in the 1600's. It was originally a Palladio commission but it got passed on to someone else and from then on, the project dragged. The Sagrada Familia is always held up as an example of an epic cathedral build but the Duomo Nuovo in Brescia took three times as long. And it's ugly. It's standard Italian baroque. Solid on the outside and garish on the inside. I had a quick look but with the mood I was in I left after a couple of minutes.
The old cathedral is far more interesting. It's about a thousand years old. Maybe older, no-one actually knows for sure. And it is circular which suggests a very old original date. Churches from the Dark Ages tended to be built around one of two Roman designs. Either based on the Roman basilica, long rectangular halls, or the Roman mausoleum, either circular or polygon layout, which fell out of popularity early on.
The Duomo Vecchio is circular which means old. The floor is also set a good 5 or 6 metres below the level of the street outside which suggests to me that it is a lot older than the "official" age.
It's really atmospheric. It feels like you've walked into something really ancient. The air was thick with incense. It looks unusual, almost theatrical. I loved it.
So that was Brescia for me. I was wiped out by this time and decided I'd had enough. There was a castle on top of the hill that overlooks the forum but I could not face the climb. I have to be honest, when I was there I really disliked Brescia. It's a shithole when you get off the train. To the south is the ugly business and industrial district, to the north is the historic centre but you have to negotiate an absolute fucking dump of a housing scheme. If I wasn't ill then I might've liked it. Walking back to the station I just felt guilty. People were out in their Sunday best, eating and drinking and shopping. They were enjoying their city and I bet they are damn proud of it. They could not give a fuck whether I liked it or not. I was crossing through their lives and expecting it to entertain me. I realised how much of a little prick had been as I headed to catch the train.
Looking back, Brescia wasn't that bad a place. If you go past the superficial aspects then it is a great place for a day out. It has a couple of the most important historic sites in northern Italy. I've quite enjoyed looking at the pictures and reliving it and hopefully learning not to be such a judgemental shitbag even if I was sick.
As I said in the intro to this trip, what happened here over the last few months has really coloured my view of it. The impact of coronavirus on Lombardy has been horrific and in light of that I struggled with how honest I should be with this article. But this is supposed to be a record of my experience at the time not my reflections on it from a distance. Sorry, Brescia, I really didn't enjoy being there at the time but that has softened as the months passed.
Getting there: as mentioned, I arrived by train. Brescia is on the main east-west line between Venice and Milan. The station is to the south of the historic centre and it's maybe a thirty minute walk into town. As I said way too much, the route takes you through a really horrible neighbourhood which is like a wall between the station and the centre. There is no avoiding it and there's no "better" route to take. There must be a bus from the station that will take you north, I never really paid it any attention as I like walking and hate buses. But I'd suggest either finding one or taking a taxi.
Left luggage: there is a left luggage office at the far end of the station building. If you are on platform 1, looking at the main building, then it is to your right. Walk down the platform and turn left and it is the doorway on the end of the block. It isn't cheapest but I personally wouldn't want to lug a bag through that housing scheme and make myself stand out as a tourist.
Tickets: you can buy a ticket in the Roman forum that gives you admission to the archaeological museum and the San Salvatore-Santa Giulia complex. I can't remember how much it was but it was fairly cheap. The archaelogical museum is by guided tour and you have to wait until the guide arrives for admission. I have no idea if there is a timetable or just whenever he's finished his coffee and fag. You can't take any bags into the monastery complex, there are lockers in the entrance which require a 1 Euro coin. The staff on the ticket desk were miserable bastards so I'd suggest getting some change in advance.
Guide books: no idea, I didn't take one. I didn't have a lot of time and mainly wanted to see the forum and the monastery so never bothered. There is a Cadogan guide for Lombardy which I'd maybe get if I went again (I love Cadogan guides) but there is no DK Eyewitness guide (my other favourite). I absolutely despise the smug pricks that write for Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, not sure what else there is.
