The Sacred Mount is located on a rocky slope overlooking the town of Varallo (VC), in Valsesia, Piedmont.
It is the oldest and most evocative of the Sacred Mounts in the Piedmont-Lombardy area (all declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2003). Because of the beauty of the site and its testimonies of faith and art, it is a unique monument of its kind.
The Sacred Mount can be considered a park-garden, a great rural Way of the Cross winding along a hillside, but it also resembles a fortified city built on a steep rocky slope, with its walls, monumental entrance gate, and two squares, one civic and one religious, modeled on those of the ancient city of Jerusalem: real palaces and real squares, with columns and arcades. However, it is not a city inhabited by people, but by paintings and statues (more than eight hundred): the Sacred Mount is at once a sacred narrative, theater, art, architecture, garden, and woodland.
Its origins lie in the ingenious idea of a Milanese friar, Bernardino Caimi, who, toward the end of the 1400s, after spending many years in Palestine, thought of rebuilding the same holy sites on this rock.
At that time, pilgrimage to the Holy Land was becoming increasingly dangerous because of the war with the Turks, so in the West the desire to reproduce the places where Jesus had lived and completed his work of salvation was spreading more and more. In Bernardino’s plan, this place was therefore intended to represent an authentic alternative to pilgrimage, eventually becoming known as the “New Jerusalem”.
The complex of around fifty buildings was constructed over the course of a couple of centuries thanks to the work of important architects, painters, and sculptors, gradually becoming a great path of spiritual education: an illustrated catechism with life-size paintings and statues that told the story of Christ in a realistic and credible way, like a series of snapshots of real life.
Discover the Sanctuary
Diocesan Administration (Basilica of S. Maria Assunta)
Sacred Mount Sanctuary, 3
13019, Varallo Sesia (VC) ITALY
Telephone: +39 0163 51131
Email: rettore@sacromontedivarallo.it
How to get there the Sanctuary
