Chiesa dei Santi Carlo e Agata

The former church of Santi Carlo e Agata in Reggio Emilia has an elliptical Baroque interior built over an earlier oratory. The deconsecrated building now serves as an exhibition and performance space, joining its religious history with contemporary cultural use.

Why it matters

The site has served as an oratory, a confraternity church and an arts venue. Dedicated to Saint Agatha in 1549 on the site of an oratory dated to 857, it was later rededicated to Saint Charles Borromeo. Its elliptical form reflects the architectural ambition of the seventeenth-century rebuilding.

What to notice

The church was rebuilt between 1662 and 1674 by Girolamo Beltrami, working from designs attributed to Bartolomeo Avanzini. Its oval plan turns the interior into a unified space. The façade has two seventeenth-century marble plaques commemorating Orazio Colombo and Sebastiano Camuncoli. Inside, statues of the four cardinal virtues—Prudence, Fortitude, Justice and Temperance—stand among elaborate stucco decoration. The balustrade of the former organ remains in place.

Context and history

In 1826 the church passed to the Confraternity of the Invention of the Holy Cross, known as the Confraternity of Death. In the modern period it was deconsecrated and later came under the management of the association Flag no Flags, which uses the historic interior for exhibitions, installations and artistic performances.