Sacro Monte, the Sacred Mountains

Because it was not possible for most people to journey to the great pilgrimage sites, nor to visit the scenes of the life of Christ or of the saints, these miniature sacred ways were built to provide them with close-to-home pilgrimage routes. Although each is somewhat different, those I have visited share many common features.

First, as the name suggests, they are built on mountains or steep hillsides. Nearly all are in parklands – or the area around them has since been named a park or nature reserve. A walking route leads uphill from chapel to chapel, each one representing either a station of the cross or a point in the life of the saint to which the shrine is dedicated.

In the case of the Sacro Monte di Varese in Varese’s Campo dei Fiori park, the chapel at the top was already there, built in the 1400s to replace one that tradition holds to have been built by St Ambrose. Each of the 18th-century chapels that mark the route to it contains a bigger-than-life-sized terra cotta scene illustrating a mystery of the rosary, such as the Annunciation and the Nativity. You can walk one way and ride the funicular the other.

The Sacro Monte di Orta San Giulio, overlooking Lake Orta, west of Lake Maggiore, can be reached either by car or a by steep path from town. The 20 chapels and statues throughout the hillside forest represent scenes from the life of St Francis of Assisi. Here the figures are painted realistically, and frescoes in the chapels help tell the story.