Sacro Monte di Varese
A UNESCO World Heritage Site draped across a forested hillside, Sacro Monte di Varese links fourteen Baroque chapels along a cobbled processional route that climbs gently to the village of Santa Maria del Monte. The frescoes inside each chapel are genuinely extraordinary, and the air up here smells of pine and old stone.
The Chapels & the Climb
The route begins at the first chapel near the Campo dei Fiori road and winds for roughly two kilometres through chestnut woodland, passing chapels built between 1604 and 1680, each housing life-size terracotta figures depicting the Mysteries of the Rosary.
Even if religious art is not your thing, the theatrical staging inside each chapel — figures frozen mid-gesture, painted skies above them — feels more like immersive theatre than a church visit. Allow at least ninety minutes to walk it properly.
Santa Maria del Monte Village
At the summit sits a perfectly preserved medieval village of ochre houses, a Romanesque campanile and a small piazza where locals drink espresso as if the twenty-first century never arrived.
The terrace beside the sanctuary offers a panorama that on clear days stretches from the Alps to Milan's skyline, with Lake Varese glinting in the valley below. Arrive before 9 am to have it almost entirely to yourself.
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