Graglia

Graglia stretches from north-west to south-east between two far-apart heights: the 365 metres of Lake Ingagna and the 2371 of the Colma di Mombarone, the pass towards the Aosta Valley. Some scholars trace the name to late Latin Gradalia, from gradus, step, because of the steep ground. In 1992 the comune moved from the province of Vercelli to that of Biella.

The hamlet called Santuario holds the Marian sanctuary of the Sacro Monte, begun in the early seventeenth century by don Andrea Valotti, with a devotion tied to the black Madonnas of Oropa and Loreto. The church was finished only in the later eighteenth century; its front, in bare brick and stone, faces south-east.