The church dedicated to Santa Maria del Carmelo, Our Lady of Carmel, was built in the 15th Century by the Order of Carmelite Friars. The Order was founded in the East; Mount Carmel is the name for a low range of mountains that rises from the Mediterranean in Palestine, near Acre. It was a pilgrimage site for Jews, Moslems and Christians. Christians celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Carmel on July 16. That is the date, in 1251, that the Virgin gave her scapular to St. Simon Stock, with the promise that all who wore it would be spared from everlasting suffering. The religious order founded for devotion to the Virgin of Mount Carmel renounced all worldly goods and begged for money to help the poor.

The outside of the church seems in keeping with the stated modesty of the religious order. This simple facade dates from the 16th Century in a style that hearkens back to the Venetian-Byzantine style. The little building on the right was the monastery whose monks were caretakers of the church