The sanctuary of Santa Cristina stands at eight hundred and sixty metres, on a hillside flanked by woodland, on the boundary between the municipalities of Verzuolo and Pagno. Its existence is attested from 1367: we know it from a document of 2 February that year, the will of Galeazzo di Saluzzo, brother of marquess Frederick II, drawn up in the old castle of Verzuolo where Galeazzo lived, that is before Frederick had the present one built.
What to see
The church has a single nave and is fronted by a portico, added after the main body, under which the wooden door opens. Inside, above the door, is a wooden tribune from which the bell tower can be reached; the sacristy is to the right of the presbytery. In front stretches an unpaved clearing with a spring. Beside the sanctuary stands a service building, now in poor repair, once used to let rooms: a sign that people stayed here rather than merely passing. Not far off there is also a half-ruined tower, on whose walls in the mid nineteenth century the arms of the Tapparelli could still be made out.
Visiting
In 1536 marquess Francesco di Saluzzo granted the use of the chapel to Paolo Turchi, a religious who lived there as a hermit; later it became the summer residence of the Dominicans of Saluzzo. Devotion was strong and deeply felt: for the patronal feast on the twenty-fourth of July, the chronicles say, a great many people came in from the villages round about.
Our editors' tip
Those festivities were abolished in 1787, because serious improprieties used to occur at them. The papers are more explicit than that: night festivals were held at Santa Cristina during which those taking part indulged in immodest dancing, mixed and at times shameless gatherings. It is a sentence written by people who wanted to put a stop to it, and it should be read as such, but it says something true about what a hill sanctuary meant to those who climbed up to it: not only a place of devotion but the one chance in the year to stay out all night. The festivities and the procession were later partly resumed, though never regularly.