Taggia venerates as its patroness the Madonna Miracolosa, in her own sanctuary. The title comes from a precise episode: in 1855 a Marian statue dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the work of the Taggia sculptor Salvatore Revelli (1816-1859), reportedly moved its eyes repeatedly. After a formal process, the Catholic Church declared the event miraculous. A similar statue by Revelli, in the Capuchin church at Loano, is said to have done the same in 1864, while Piedmontese anticlerical laws were forcing the friars to leave their convent.
The oldest feast, though, has a different origin: its first edition was held on 12 February 1626, when the people of Taggia fulfilled a vow made to Saint Benedict Revelli, bishop of Albenga — the diocese to which Taggia belonged until 1831 — to whom they had entrusted themselves so that the town would be spared during the Thirty Years' War. An older and entirely legendary tradition also surrounds him, holding him a native of Taggia who, centuries earlier, had saved the town from Saracen raids. Today, on the last weekend of February, a historical re-enactment with a procession and staged scenes tells the origin of that feast and 17th-century life in the town.
