The Sacro Monte of Varallo

THE SACRO MONTE OF VARALLO

Varallo is the largest municipality in the province of Vercelli (VC) in Piedmont, located in Valsesia.
Lies along the banks of the Sesia and is divided into two parts by Mastallone stream, its tributary, which separates the old town, said Varallo Vecchio, the most recent areas. Combining industrial and tourist activities. It is dominated by the Sacro Monte di Varallo, one of the major places of worship of Catholicism in Piedmont, which attracts thousands of tourists annually.

The Sacred Mountain of Varallo is the oldest example and artistic interest in the Sacred Mountains in the area Alpine Lombard - Piedmont. It consists of a basilica, which is the final station of a path that winds through the streets and squares, and forty-four frescoed chapels populated by about eight hundred statues (polychrome terracotta or wood) life size.

The idea of building up a Sacred Mountain located on a cliff overlooking the town of Varallo was conceived in 1481 by the Franciscan friar Bernardino Caimi [3]. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century had begun to spread in the West, a strong urge to reproduce the places of the Holy Land, to which the pilgrimage was becoming more and more dangerous because of the Turks.

From the early years of the sixteenth century, the firm's director of Sacro Monte was the Valsesian Gaudenzio Ferrari, designed several chapels, was a sculptor of wooden works and terracotta and painter of frescoes, chapels, are the background to the sacred scenes.

In the years 1565-68 work continued under the direction of architect Galeazzo Alessi, who conceived a new provision of the chapels, not on the basis of topological (with the evidence of the pilgrimage sites Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, as it was in the drawing initial Bernardino Caimi [7]) but chronological, to allow the visitor to follow, the chapel in the chapel, the stages of Jesus' earthly journey.

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