santuario, mariano, diocesano, Santuario Mariano Diocesano Santa Maria della Serra

In the historic centre of Montalto Uffugo, the Santuario Mariano Diocesano Santa Maria della Serra is a church of patient endurance. Its bones are early thirteenth-century Gothic, originally a Greek-cross plan with a crypt that doubled as a cemetery. Consecrated in 1227, it has since been shaken, remade, and shaken again. After repeated earthquake damage, the main arm was extended in the eighteenth century, and the present façade added. You approach up a grand staircase; the lower steps, survivors of the earlier church, are a delicate tracery of carved stone in the barocchetto style. Above the central door, a terracotta Madonna della Serra watches from her niche. Inside, a wooden statue shows Mary enthroned, hands resting on her lap, supporting a Christ child who holds a silver model of Montalto Uffugo’s skyline. The church was badly damaged in the 1905 and 1908 earthquakes and remained closed for years, until a priest named don Gaetano Mauro arrived as parish priest and revived it.

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