Chiesa del Carmine, Catholic church in Messina, Italy.

The Chiesa del Carmine is a Catholic church on Via Antonino Martino, built in 1930 to Cesare Bazzani's design in the eighteenth-century Baroque style. Its interior is a Greek cross with side chapels, decorated with polychrome marble and pink marble columns with carved capitals. The octagonal dome has a circular window on each side and is topped by a square lantern; the main altar holds an eighteenth-century statue of the Madonna of Carmel giving the scapular to St Simon Stock.

The Messina earthquake of 1908 destroyed much of the city, including the original church that once stood on this site. Architect Cesare Bazzani designed this new structure as a modern replacement for the lost building.

The Carmelites arrived in Messina from the Holy Land by 1238, and the city was long called the cradle of the order. Every 15 July the statue of the Madonna del Carmine, brought in triumph on that date in 1931, is carried in procession. The main altar shows her handing the scapular to St Simon Stock.

The church stands on Via Antonino Martino, the old Via Porta Imperiale, next to the Palazzo degli "Elefanti" and close to the Tribunal. The octagonal dome lines up with Via Nicola Fabrizi and Corso Cavour, so the building reads as the end point of both streets from a distance. Look for the sculpted figure in the niche above the lower arcade of the bell tower.

The church stands on Via Antonino Martino, the old Via Porta Imperiale, where the Grande Ospedale Civile and the church of Santa Lucia all'Ospedale once stood before the 1908 earthquake. The Palazzo degli "Elefanti" still partly survives beside it. The Carmelites had been in Messina since the 13th century, and their first convent, at the San Michele stream, was sold to Sister Frisa for about 108 feudi.