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 on the UNESCO World Heritage list are spread across Piedmont and Lombardy, most of them close to the lakes. Here is each one, roughly in the order they were founded.

1. Sacro Monte di Varallo

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte di Varallo on the official Sacri Monti site

The first and the grandest. On a rocky spur above the town of Varallo in the Sesia Valley, Bernardino Caimi began his small Holy Land in the 1480s, and in the early 1500s Gaudenzio Ferrari filled the chapels with life-size painted statues with real hair and beards. It became the model for every Sacred Mountain that followed.

2. Sacro Monte di Crea

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte di Crea on the official Sacri Monti site

The southernmost of the nine, on a hilltop in the heart of Monferrato wine country, surrounded by vineyards. It was founded in 1589 around a much older pilgrimage church, the Sanctuary of the Madonna Assunta, and its chapels follow the Virgin Mary.

3. Sacro Monte di Orta

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte di Orta on the official Sacri Monti site

Twenty chapels on a wooded promontory above Lake Orta, each telling a scene from the life of Saint Francis with statues and paintings. The path runs along the hilltop with views down to San Giulio Island. Pair it with a morning in Orta San Giulio, at the foot of the hill.

4. Sacro Monte di Varese

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte di Varese on the official Sacri Monti site

A cobbled Sacred Way of fourteen chapels climbs the slopes of Mount Velate above Varese, built between 1604 and 1698 to tell the mysteries of the Rosary. One architect designed the whole route, chapels, arches and fountains, which is why it feels the most unified of the nine. At the top is the village of Santa Maria del Monte and views over the lakes.

5. Sacro Monte di Oropa

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte di Oropa on the official Sacri Monti site

Above Biella, next to the great Sanctuary of Oropa and its Black Madonna. A path zigzags up a grassy slope still used as pasture to twelve chapels, begun in 1620, that tell the life of the Virgin Mary in painted terracotta.

6. Sacro Monte di Ossuccio

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte di Ossuccio on the official Sacri Monti site

The one on Lake Como. Fourteen chapels climb through olive groves behind Ossuccio, on the western shore, to a sanctuary with views over the lake and Comacina Island. It was finished in 1710, and most of its 230 statues are by Agostino Silva.

7. Sacro Monte di Ghiffa

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte di Ghiffa on the official Sacri Monti site

The smallest of the nine: a sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, three chapels and an arcaded Way of the Cross in chestnut woods above Lake Maggiore. Come for the quiet and the view across the lake to the Pre-Alps of Lombardy.

8. Sacro Monte Calvario di Domodossola

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte Calvario di Domodossola on the official Sacri Monti site

On Mattarella hill above Domodossola, close to the Swiss border, the chapels follow the Passion of Christ in life-size figures. The Capuchins who began it were expelled under Napoleon, and the work was taken up again in 1828 by Antonio Rosmini’s order and went on into the twentieth century.

9. Sacro Monte di Belmonte

Plan your visit: Sacro Monte di Belmonte on the official Sacri Monti site

The youngest, above the Canavese near Valperga, looking out over the plain towards Turin. A Franciscan friar back from the Holy Land planned a new Way of the Cross here in the eighteenth century, beside a sanctuary of the Virgin Mary that dates back to the early eleventh century.

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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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