The sixteenth-century chapel is the remnant of a small Carmelite convent that served as a lodge for hosting the confreres during their travels. The Restara area was important for Este, constituting a sort of port infrastructure, of which the convent and the church were the reference point, along with the mills at the confluence of the canal. Today, the jagged coexistence of the religious and productive aspects remains only in the walls, restored (of the chapel) or new (where the mills once were).
The first church dates back to the early seventeenth century. It must have been a rather simple building, with a single nave like the current one, built with mixed masonry of stone and brick, as can still be seen today in the preserved side walls. In the eighteenth century, the expansion of the church was continued, consisting of the setting up of a new façade, the insertion of two altars along the nave walls, two wooden confessionals, and a remarkable finely decorated wooden coffered ceiling. Inside the current church, there is also an exquisite terrazzo flooring with a pattern of alternating white and red diamonds. In the area of the floor in front of the presbytery, two dates are inscribed, one referencing 1610, the same as that indicated on the previously mentioned plaque, the other is 1860 preceded by the letters AN.
The relationship of the church with the Bisatto canal is historical and remains today legible from the view that can be enjoyed from the Ponte delle Grazie. It's enough to imagine that the embankment wall is not there and the church becomes the backdrop of the waterway, as if it were a street.
The chapel, as mentioned, much smaller than the present one, was outside the walls but strategically located at the crossroads of the roads to the south, but especially to Restara, that is, at a stopping point for the boats moving along the Bisatto canal, and annexed to a Carmelite convent of which there is no longer any trace.
The rural character of the church, as if it were part of a fraction, even though it is just a few meters from the historic center, is still quite evident today and is confirmed by the festivals associated with the village, particularly the feast of the "brombe," the golden plums produced in the gardens of the area that are blessed before being sold at the festival.
The church has historically been associated with the Mills of Restara, seen as an annex to the great productive complex. Today, the church has been restored and reopened (2015), but the transformative intervention on the Mills overshadows it, even though the forms have now become so alien to each other that each building can maintain its own individuality. The powerful ancient and easily recognizable signal of the Madonna resting on the peak of the church's pediment immediately catches the eye when compared to the new and looming forms of the new buildings, repetitive and ultimately banal.
