Italy Has Nine Sacred Mountains That Almost Nobody Visits — And They’re Extraordinary

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Italy has been hiding something extraordinary in plain sight. Scattered across the foothills of Piedmont and Lombardy are nine hilltop sanctuaries — each one a miniature holy city of chapels, cobbled paths, and Renaissance frescoes — that together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site most visitors have never heard of. They are the Sacri Monti, the Sacred Mountains of Italy, and they have been drawing pilgrims, wanderers, and curious souls for over five hundred years.

The surprising part is not that they exist. It is that you can walk through them on a quiet Tuesday morning and have the entire place to yourself.

What Exactly Is a Sacro Monte?

The concept emerged in the late fifteenth century, when a Franciscan friar named Bernardino Caimi had a rather ambitious idea. He wanted to bring the Holy Land to the people of northern Italy — not as a painting or a text, but as a place you could walk through and feel. His first Sacred Mountain rose above the town of Varallo in Piedmont, a series of chapels built along a winding path, each one containing life-size terracotta figures depicting scenes from the life of Christ. It was, in the most literal sense, a walk-through Bible.

The idea spread quickly. Over the following century and a half, eight more Sacred Mountains were built across the region, each dedicated to a different religious theme. Some honour the Virgin Mary. Others trace the lives of Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Charles Borromeo, or Saint Anthony of Padua. Each site is unique in character, architecture, and landscape — but all share the same essential quality. They ask you to slow down, to walk, and to look.

Nine Sites, Nine Worlds

The nine Sacri Monti inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2003 are spread across Piedmont and Lombardy. Varallo is the oldest and grandest, with 45 chapels climbing a steep hillside above the Sesia Valley. Orta San Giulio sits on the shores of Lake Orta and dedicates its 20 chapels entirely to the life of Saint Francis — the path winding through a beech forest that turns extraordinary shades of amber in autumn. Oropa, near Biella, draws more than three million visitors a year to venerate a black Madonna, yet remains largely unknown outside northern Italy.

Further east, the Sacred Mountain of Varese rises above the city of the same name, its 14 chapels connected by a cobbled pilgrims’ road lined with Baroque oratories. Crea, in the flatlands of Monferrato, is the southernmost of all — a gentle hill rather than a true mountain, but no less moving for it. Each site tells a different story and rewards a different kind of attention.

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The Art Hidden Inside

The greatest surprise of the Sacri Monti is what waits inside those chapels. Centuries before theme parks or immersive exhibitions existed, Italian artists were building something far more powerful. The chapels at Varallo contain more than 800 life-size terracotta statues, painted with extraordinary realism and arranged in tableau scenes — the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion — with real clothing, real hair, and expressions of grief and joy so vivid that first-time visitors often stop and stare in silence. Gaudenzio Ferrari, one of the great northern Renaissance painters, created many of the earliest frescoes here, working alongside sculptors to blur the boundary between painting and reality in a way that still feels startling today.

At the Sacred Mountain of Orta, the chapels dedicated to Saint Francis contain polychrome statues that were designed not just to be seen but to be felt — the humble friar preaching to birds, kneeling in the snow, sleeping on bare earth. It is devotional art of the highest order, and very little of it appears in any art history survey. These works were made for ordinary pilgrims, not for scholars, which may be precisely why they were overlooked for so long — and why they still feel so immediate.

If you are interested in Italy’s extraordinary artistic heritage, you might also enjoy reading about the dome that left Florence stumped for a century — another story of Italian genius hiding in plain sight.

Who Goes There Now?

Today the Sacri Monti attract a quietly devoted mixture of pilgrims, hikers, art lovers, and people who simply want somewhere beautiful to think. The paths are well maintained and freely accessible. There is rarely a ticket booth. The chapels are generally open during daylight hours, and in the quieter months — late autumn, early spring — you may genuinely find yourself alone with five-hundred-year-old masterpieces and nothing but birdsong for company.

Italian families come on Sunday afternoons for the same reason they always have: the combination of beauty, fresh air, and a sense of something larger than the everyday. There are trattorias near most of the sites, and the local food in Piedmont and Lombardy is among the finest in Italy. A visit to Orta San Giulio pairs naturally with a slow lunch on the lakeside, followed by a late afternoon walk through the chapel path as the light turns golden. It is, by any measure, a perfect Italian day.

The Sacri Monti represent something rare in travel: places that are genuinely extraordinary, genuinely accessible, and genuinely unhurried. In a country where the most famous sites heave with crowds from April to October, these nine hilltop sanctuaries offer something increasingly difficult to find — Italy at its most itself, with room to breathe.

For those planning a wider journey through northern Italy, the story of how Turin became Italy’s chocolate capital makes for a wonderful companion piece — another corner of Piedmont that rewards the curious traveller. And if you want to understand what makes small-town Italy so enduring, how Matera went from Italy’s shame to one of its greatest treasures tells a story of quiet resilience that feels very similar in spirit.

You Might Also Enjoy

• The Dome That Left Florence Stumped for a Century — Until One Man Solved It
• Why Napoleon Accidentally Made Turin Italy’s Chocolate Capital
• How Matera Went From Italy’s Shame to One of Its Greatest Treasures

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