Inside Loreto's basilica stands a house: the Holy House of Nazareth which, tradition holds, arrived here in 1294, making the town one of the Catholic world's most important Marian sanctuaries. Bramante and Sansovino worked on its marble screen; the Black Madonna watches from the altar.
Around the porticoed square, the Renaissance fortress-town reads as a collective work of the era's greatest architects. Every June, the overnight Macerata-Loreto pilgrimage brings tens of thousands of walkers to the basilica at dawn. From the hill, the Conero sea closes the horizon.
Near Loreto
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
