The church of Madonna in Campagna stands in Sacconago, a hamlet of Busto Arsizio, and is dedicated to Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. When it was built it stood on the road called in Longù, which linked Sacconago with Lonate and Ferno.
What to see
The name of the road, the sources say, comes from the Latin longorius, «long pole»: probably because the land around it was once covered by woods from which timber was taken to make poles. The church was built on an older country chapel: in 1582 Cardinal Charles Borromeo, visiting Sacconago, mentions only the parish church and San Donato, while Madonna in Campagna appears in a document by Giuseppe Pozzobonelli of 1753 as «Beata Vergine Maria in campagna». The present building was begun in 1702 and finished in 1704; it was blessed on 23 March, Easter Day, by Stefano Custodi, in the presence of the consul of Busto Arsizio, Carlo Crespi.
The Pietà is a fresco: Mary supports Jesus with her right hand, while her left is raised with the palm open. It dates from the fifteenth century, so the earlier chapel already existed then. Behind the two figures there was a background showing Golgotha with three empty crosses; but the restoration promoted by the parish priest don Luigi Caimi showed that the original background was far simpler, a single red drape, now brought back to light. In that document Cardinal Pozzobonelli described the church with a barrel vault, a floor of small tiles, plastered and whitewashed walls, one door in the façade and two small windows at the sides.
Visiting
The church is in Sacconago, beside a surviving stretch of the old in Longù road, today largely replaced by asphalt roads. The sources consulted give no opening hours: check with the parish.
Our editors' tip
Look at the small bell-gable, built in 1950: the bell it holds was donated by the inhabitants of the nearby farmsteads. The porch in front of the entrance, which was not yet there in the eighteenth century, may date from the nineteenth; the sacristy is older, from the second half of the sixteenth.
