Chiesa del Carmine o dell’Immacolata Concezione

The small church was built in 1626 by don Giuseppe Belloni and named after the Immaculate Conception. The building and the annexed house are destined by the same priest to welcome a small community of Carmelite Fathers. The convent was founded in 1630 but will have a short life since in 1652 it will be suppressed in compliance with the Pope Innocent X's bull. The church passes under the "jurisdiction" of the Abbey of San Rufillo and, later, of the Chapter of San Pietro From Rome. The building undergoes transformations already during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Significant are the works completed in the 1940s, for which one can rightly speak of "rebuilding" the church in those neoclassical forms that have remained almost unchanged until today. Following the post-unification suppression, the church became the property of the Monte di Pietà of Forlimpopoli and then incorporated into the Monte di Credito on Pegno di Forlì in 1941, it arrived at the Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì in 1948. Today the church of Carmine belongs to the Cassa dei Risparmi Foundation of Forlì. The interior is characterized by a single nave with a vaulted roof. On the left altar you can admire the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception attributed to the Ravenna painter Francesco Longhi (1544-1618). The main altar is decorated with a seventeenth-century altarpiece of exquisite workmanship in which the graceful statue of the Madonna del Carmelo is placed. The decoration of the entire presbytery area - with depictions of Angels, St. Peter and St. Paul, Faith and Hope - and the vault - with the Assumption of the Virgin and Saints Simon Stock and Teresa of Avila and the tondos with Evangelists - it was conceived and built by the Forlimpopolese painter Paolo Bacchetti (1848-1886). (text by Silvia Bartoli)