An afternoon in Carpi

We spent an afternoon in Carpi, where we took a walk in the beautiful piazza dei Martiri and then along the street with the arcades that is its natural conclusion. The Piazza dei Martiri is considered the largest in Europe, we do not know if that is true, but it is undoubtedly grand! On the western side it is closed by a single long portico of 52 columns, to the north there is the Mannerist cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, begun in the 16th century and finished three centuries later, while the magnificent Castle, or Palazzo dei Pio, overlooks the eastern side of the square and is a complex of buildings in medieval, Renaissance and 17th-century style. We visited the museum housed in the beautiful rooms of the Palazzo dei Pio and the Chapel, completely frescoed; in a separate wing of the castle, with another entrance, we visited the Museum of the Deported.

During the Second World War, the hamlet of Fossoli was the site of a transit camp, from which numerous detainees were deported to the extermination camps. The Municipality of Carpi therefore set up this museum of the Deported as a memorial to deportation and the Holocaust. Simple and chilling! And to complete it, it has a room in which every square cm is covered with the names of the 14,000 Italian deportees...who never came back. Having left the museum, thanks to the beautiful day, we took a walk to the more intimate Piazza Garibaldi. Beautiful, Carpi!