santuario, mariano, Santa Maria del Monte Taburno in Bucciano

On the southern slope of Monte Taburno, at 570 metres, this Marian sanctuary commands a wide panorama over the Campanian plain. It belongs to the regional park of Taburno-Camposauro, in the small town of Bucciano, a place that became a separate commune only in the late eighteenth century.

The church’s origin is rooted in a local story from 1401: a deaf-mute girl from a nearby village is said to have heard a voice and discovered a walled-up statue of the Virgin in a cave on the mountainside. The image showed Mary seated, in a blue mantle dotted with gold stars, holding the child Jesus. A first church was built to house it; only ruins remain. A second, more substantial structure was commissioned in 1498 by a member of the Carafa family, then feudal lords of the area. A lunette over the door still bears his portrait in stone. Dominican friars inhabited the adjoining convent until the mid-eighteenth century. After a long period of neglect, the sanctuary was restored and reopened in the 1970s.

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