santuario, diocesano, Madonna di Loreto

On the winding road up from Biella, just before the Santuario della Madonna di Loreto, stands the municipal water reservoir of Graglia. Water is the thread here: the sanctuary is renowned for the lightness and diuretic quality of its eponymous water, once the basis of hydrotherapy establishments and baths. The landscape is dotted with the ruins of five chapels along the path to the summit of Colle San Carlo, where a church was to have been the crowning point of an abandoned project. A dedicated spot offers an acoustic echo so fine it can repeat words of up to eleven syllables.

The sanctuary itself incorporates a chapel of the Holy House of Loreto, part of an extraordinary, unrealised scheme for a Sacro Monte of one hundred chapels. The ambitious plan was abandoned in favour of this single Baroque church, the design of which was commissioned by a ducal patron. It is a place where faith, water, and the curious ambitions of the past converge.

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