City Museum of Brescia: Santa Giulia

SANTA GIULIA MUSEUM via Musei 81/b, 25121 Brescia

TIMES: from 1 October to 15 June: Tuesday to Sunday from 9:30 to 17:30 (ticket office closes at 16:30); From 16 June to 30 September:  Tuesday to Sunday 10:30 to 19:00 hours (ticket office closes at 18:00); Wednesday input with themed tour departing at 19.00 and 20.30. Closed on Mondays.

TICKETS:  € 10.00 Full; € 7.50 Reduced (groups of 10 to 30 people and conventions – click here to check the list of active agreements); € 5.50 * Reduced (aged 14 to 18 years over 65 years, university students and academies); € 3.00 Reduced (classes and groups of pupils min.15 min.10 college students); € 4.50 € 4.50 Schools with teaching; Free (Desire Card; ICOM members)

FOR INFORMATION: for information CUP (Unique Booking Centre) tel. 030.2977833-834,from October 1 to June 15 from Monday to Sunday from 10:00 to 16:00,from June 16 to September 30 from Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00 to 17:00; santagiulia@bresciamusei.com

The convent of San Salvatore, later named after Santa Giulia (915) was founded at the wish of King Desiderius and his wife Ansa in 753 AD, and built on a particularly rich archeological site ( the remains of Roman domus have been found under the basilica of San Salvatore and in the kitchen garden of Santa Giulia. Considerable enlargement and reconstruction over the centuries produced a building  constructed round three cloisters, as it is today.Major alterations were made in the time of the city states (XII century: rebuilding of the cloisters, enlargement of San Salvatore’s crypt, building of Santa Maria in Solario) and in the late XV century ( complete rebuilding of the cloisters and addition of the north cloister of dormitories, raising of the nuns’ choir and repositioning of the front of the church of San Salvatore, which was in turn destroyed and completely redesigned when the new church of Santa Giulia was built in 1499).
The Benedictine convent is where Desiderius’ daughter, Manzoni’s Ermengarda, after being repudiated by Charlemagne, took refuge until she died. The convent thrived and became one of the richest and most important in northern Italy, with estates all over the peninsular, also thanks to bequests from its nuns, who often came from aristocratic families. It was dissolved in 1798 under Jacobin revolutionary legislation, then turned into a barracks and deprived of its property. Its progressive dilapidation was halted in part when in 1882 The Museum of the Christian Era was set up in the three buildings, but it was only in 1966 that proper restoration work began when the town council acquired the whole area. Now the complex has returned to its original glory and houses the City Museum. (source comune di Brescia, www.turismobrescia.it)