Piemonte Italia

Sacro Monte di Crea

 “The Sacred Mountains of Northern Italy are groups of chapels and other architectural artefacts built between the 16th and 17th centuries dedicated to different aspects of the Christian faith. In addition to their symbolic and spiritual significance, they also possess remarkable beauty, virtue and are pleasant to visit, integrated into a natural environmental landscape of hills, woods and lakes. They also contain very important artistic finds (fresco painting and statues)”. It was with this motivation that UNESCO registered the “Cultural Landscape of the Sacred Mountains of Piemonte and Lombardy” in 2003 on its list of World Heritage Sites.
The prestigious acknowledgement attributes a universal value to the seven Sacred Mountains of Piemonte ( Belmonte, Crea, Domodossola, Ghiffa, Oropa, Orta and Varallo) as well as the two in Lombardy (Ossuccio e Varese), highlighting the extraordinary wealth, quality and value of these jewels of history, art and nature. A valuation that emphasises the systematic quality of the creation and project of the Sacred Mountains, made up of different monumental complexes that together bring a unique cultural-territorial landscape to life. This becomes even more vivid thanks to the faithfulness of pilgrims who, in many cases, visit these mountains as a sign of devotion. From the circle of the western Alps, where the phenomenon originated over 500 years ago, the Sacred Mountains were subsequently diffused to a large extent by Catholic Europe. The seven Sacred Mountains of Piemonte are recorded in the system of protected areas of the Regione Piemonte, which attends to the conservation of artistic-architectural artefacts, maintenance and protection of the surrounding environment.