santuario, basilica, Madonna di Porto

The Santuario della Madonna di Porto is a centre of Marian spirituality in Calabria, a Baroque church whose origins are bound up with the city of Catanzaro, recognised as the “Patron” of the entire province. During the Napoleonic occupation of 1807, the image of the Madonna was stolen during the sack of Gimigliano, then remarkably returned to devotion by the very same French troops. In 1948-49, the “Peregrinatio Marie” saw the painting visit Catanzaro and forty-seven towns across the provincial territory, each consecrating itself to her. Pope John Paul II crowned the image at Catanzaro’s stadium in 1984, and the church was elevated to a Diocesan Marian Sanctuary in 2000, then to a Minor Basilica by Benedict XVI in 2012. What began as a local shrine has become a formal seat of pilgrimage, its Baroque architecture housing centuries of resilience and local devotion.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.