Chiesa del Carmine
Gothic brick church with a soaring terracotta facade, rebuilt after its vault collapsed from cost-cutting shortcuts.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Chiesa del Carmine in Milan starts in 1446, when the Carmelite friars finished their new church for Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and traces what happened almost as soon as the scaffolding came down. It follows the years the ruin sat abandoned, and the Sforza dukes' decision to bring in architect Pietro Antonio Solari to rebuild it under Ludovico il Moro, staying faithful to the old Gothic design on paper. Look at the columns lining the nave as you walk in, and consider what a builder might have hidden in the foundations to save money.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
St. Gotthard Church in Corte
Gothic palace chapel with a pink terracotta bell tower that once bore the city's first public clock.
Chiesa di Santa Maria
Renaissance church famed for a painted choir barely a metre deep that fools the eye into a soaring hall.
Basilica di San Babila
Romanesque-revival church at the center of an eighteen forty-eight uprising against Austrian rule.
Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie
Renaissance dining hall holding Leonardo's Last Supper mural, saved by sandbags when wartime bombs destroyed the room around it.
Ca' Granda
Renaissance-Gothic former hospital of soaring brick arcades, built around courtyards, now a university's grand halls.
Chiesa di San Marco
Gothic and Baroque nave where Verdi conducted his Requiem premiere in eighteen seventy-four.