Calle Brescia

It takes its name from Brescia, a Lombard city known in Antiquity as Brixia, capital of the province of the same name in Lombardy. It belongs to the Parque de las Avenidas development, promoted by CIOHSA from 1956 on land in La Guindalera, whose streets bear the names of European and American cities starting with B.

Calle Brescia was born of an alphabetical whim. When in 1956 the CIOHSA company began developing some forty hectares of La Guindalera, between the Abroñigal stream and the Canalillo, its planners decided to name every street of the new Parque de las Avenidas after a city beginning with B. So came Bruselas, Bremen, Bolonia, Berna, Burdeos, Berlín and this Brescia. Why the initial B, no document makes clear. The neighbourhood’s first phase raised more than two thousand flats from 1958 on, in blocks of five to ten storeys arranged in H, U or T shapes, with central heating serving the whole cluster. The city that lends the name is the Lombard capital of its province, the region’s second after Milan. The Romans called it Brixia. Italy knows it as the Leonessa d’Italia, the lioness of Italy, a nickname that celebrates the Ten Days of 1849, when it rose against Austrian occupation. Its Roman and Lombard remains appear on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

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