The Sacro Monte di Ossuccio is a devotional route that climbs to the sanctuary of the Beata Vergine del Soccorso, above the village of Ossuccio, at an elevation of 419 metres. It has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2003.
The 14 chapels
The 2003 UNESCO listing covers the group of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy. Along the route there are fourteen chapels on a central plan, in Baroque style, built between 1635 and 1710. They are dedicated to the Mysteries of the Rosary in sequence: five Joyful, five Sorrowful and four Glorious; the fifteenth, the Coronation, is inside the sanctuary, above the altar. Together the chapels hold about 230 statues in stucco and terracotta, by Agostino Silva with Francesco Silva, Carlo Gaffuri, Francesco Innocenzo Torriani, Gian Paolo Recchi and Salvatore Pozzi.
The sanctuary of the Beata Vergine del Soccorso
The main body of the church was completed in 1537 and later enlarged. The bell tower was finished in 1719, after twenty-five years of work, to a design by Giovanni Battista Bianchi. The interior has a single nave of four bays, with Baroque frescoes by Salvatore Pozzi depicting the Assumption and the Coronation, and a two-colour floor of 1655 in white Musso marble and black Varenna marble. The marble statue of the Madonna, probably datable to the early 14th century, is kept in the chapel of the Madonna del Soccorso, built in 1878. Tradition links it to a deaf-mute girl who was then healed; one hypothesis derives its form from a Roman statue of Ceres. In Roman times the site did in fact host a cult of Ceres, mentioned by Pliny the Younger.
Along the Greenway
The complex stands isolated among olive groves and woodland, 25 kilometres north of Como, and looks down on the Isola Comacina. From the route of the Greenway del Lago di Como, at Ossuccio, a cobbled path with low stone walls climbs to the Sacro Monte. The village of Ossuccio is part of the comune of Tremezzina; along the lake, a little further on, is Villa Balbiano.