Basilica of San Salvatore

The Monastery of Santa Giulia is a monastic complex whose current building dates mainly from the 15th and 16th centuries. This monastery developed around the ancient 8th-century Basilica of San Salvatore. In the mid 12th century the monastery underwent a major renovation and extension in Romanesque style, but the present structure owes much to the 15th century when the nuns' choir was completed, the cloister rebuilt and the northern dormitory added. In the 16th century (1599) the church of Santa Giulia was finally completed. The complex is, together with other buildings founded by the Lombards, a UNESCO heritage site.

The church of Santa Maria in Solario was built in the middle of the 12th century in the complex of the monastery of Santa Giulia. Already in the 15th century, the upper hall of the church was decorated with frescoes, but most of the frescoes that can be admired today were painted by Floriano Ferramola between 1513 and 1524. Put out of use, like the rest of the monastery, in 1797, the church was not recovered until the second half of the twentieth century and since 1998 it has been part of the itinerary of the Museum of Santa Giulia, founded on the premises of the former monastery.

The new cathedral was erected between 1604 and 1825 on the site of the early Christian basilica of San Pietro de Dom (5th-6th century). The old cathedral, which was in an advanced state of deterioration, had to be replaced by a new one, more suited to the new architectural requirements dictated by the Counter-Reformation and more in line with the architecture of the time. Three phases of construction can be identified for the new cathedral: the first (1604 to 1611) was directed by the architect Giovanni Battista Lantana, who, seeing his initial project fundamentally revised, eventually left the building site. The second phase (1611 - 1630) was directed by Lorenzo Binago but was halted by the Brescia plague epidemic, which undermined the city for several decades. The third phase (1695 - 1825) is that of Antonio Biasio, who will hand over the task to his son in 1758 and will not be completed until the next century when the dome of the church is finally built.