This sanctuary does not carry the name of the Madonna it was dedicated to: it carries the name of the woman who had it built and then kept the right to run it, winning a lawsuit that lasted five years. She was called Agostina Bernabone, she was a widow, and the wood where it all began was hers, inherited under her husband's will.
What to see
In 1531, tradition recounts, Agostina was drawn into the wood by a glow coming from a chestnut tree and found there a small picture of the Virgin and Child. She took it home, and the next day found it back where it had been. The event was read as a precise will, and the local people built the church in a few months, dedicating it to the Madonna of Loreto.
The following year Agostina asked the bishop for the right of patronage and got it: she could appoint the chaplain and administer the offerings. The parish priest of Riccò reported her to the bishop, and the matter ended up in Genoa before a delegate of the Holy See, amid interrogations, testimonies, sentences and appeals. After five years she and her son won, and ever since the place has simply been the Agostina.
Visiting
The sanctuary is in the parish of Valdipino, above Riccò del Golfo, isolated in the woods at three hundred metres; you get there by a narrow road and then on foot, and it opens mainly for the feast and for services. An hour.
Our editors' tip
Look around you and notice that there is no village. A church with no settlement around it is almost always a church built against somebody: it stands where somebody decided it should stand, not where the parish needed it. Here it is in Agostina's wood because it was Agostina's wood, and that is partly why she won the case.