Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine

In Milan's Brera district stands the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine, begun by the Carmelite order in 1269. Fires and structural collapses have marked its long history. The Solari masters restored it in the early fifteenth century and gave the building its Milanese Renaissance character.

Carlo Maciachini gave the church its facade in a nineteenth-century restoration, an eclectic front that hints at a turbulent past. Step inside and you find walls of red brick, with columns of Angera stone carrying the wide arches. Light and shadow take turns across them, giving the interior its drama. Gothic structure and Baroque detail share the space, and side chapels honour various saints and families. The Carmine Chapel, on the right of the presbytery, dazzles with coloured marbles and ornate decoration.

Overhead, the main dome carries paintings by Camillo Procaccini, the Lombard painter known for his reformative religious art. The neoclassical marble altar holds a statue of the Redeemer by Giovanni Rusca. Gaetano Monti carved the praying angels that flank it.