The Sacro Monte of Varese

THE SACRO MONTE OF VARESE

The Sacro Monte of Varese is part of the group of the nine Sacred Mountains subalpine of Piedmont and Lombardy in 2003 entered the UNESCO list of World Heritage.

It consists of fourteen chapels devoted to the mysteries of the Rosary, that lead to the shrine of Santa Maria del Monte, a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages, that serves as the fifteenth chapel which also preserves a neoclassic organ of 1831, the work of Luigi Maroni Biroldi, restored by Peter Talamona in 1871 by Vincenzo Mascioni in 1989. work began in 1604, along two kilometers of a wide cobbled path.

Thanks to generous donations, the building was much more rapid than that of other sacred mountains and thirteen of the chapels were completed by 1623. In 1698 the works were completed in their present form. As in Rosario, the chapels are divided in groups of five. The architectural style of the chapels, the triumphal arches and fountains is varied, inspired by the stylistic ways of mannerism. The statues and frescoes that decorate the chapels together constitute a high seventeenth-century sacred art testimony in the Milan area.

The village of Santa Maria del Monte, where the shrine is located (altitude 844 m s.l.m.), is connected to the rest of the city, as well as through an urban bus line (line C), also through an historic cable car recently brought back into operation. The top of the mountain (called the Sacred Mountain) rises up to the maximum altitude of 883 meters s.l.m.
"It seems that Italians can not watch a high place without wanting to put something on top, and a few times they did most happily that the Sacro Monte of Varese»
(Samuel Butler Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino, 1881)

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