The Sacro Monte of Varallo is the oldest of the Sacri Monti of the Lombard-Piedmontese Alpine area, and the most interesting artistically. It is a route: you climb through lanes and small squares past forty-four frescoed chapels, peopled by about eight hundred life-size statues in polychrome terracotta or wood, and end at the basilica. Since 4 July 2003 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage site together with the other eight Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.
What to see
The idea dates from 1481 and belongs to a Franciscan friar, Bernardino Caimi. By the middle of the fifteenth century pilgrimage to the Holy Land was becoming dangerous because of the Turks, and in the West the need to reproduce its places was growing: Caimi wanted to remake not only the Holy Sepulchre but all the most emblematic sites, so that this hill would be a real alternative to the journey. Hence the name by which it is known, the New Jerusalem. Work began in 1486 and by 1491 the chapels of the Holy Sepulchre, the Ascension and the Deposition were finished.
Visiting
The route followed today is not the one Caimi planned. Between 1565 and 1568 Galeazzo Alessi rearranged the chapels: no longer by place, Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, but in chronological order, so that the visitor follows chapel by chapel the stages of the life of Jesus. The basilica of the Assumption was begun in 1614 to designs by Bartolomeo Ravelli and Giovanni d'Enrico and finished only in 1713; the Palace of Pilate has a Holy Stair built on the model of the Roman one at San Giovanni in Laterano.
Our editors' tip
The statues are not decoration, they are the substance. From the early sixteenth century until 1528 the director of the enterprise was Gaudenzio Ferrari, from Valduggia, who designed chapels, sculpted and painted the frescoed backgrounds; in the seventeenth century came il Morazzone, il Tabacchetti and the D'Enrico brothers from Alagna, among them Tanzio da Varallo. It is by looking at their faces that you understand why Giovanni Testori called this place the great mountain theatre.