More than six hundred human-scale statues and about six thousand other figures of men, women, and children; a city of faith, a fortress of the Catholic Church and its principles built during the heyday of the Counter-Reformation to counter the spread of Protestantism – this is the way that the Milanese Franciscan Bernardino Caimi imagined Varallo after his long stay in Jerusalem. And so began the construction, between 1486 and 1493, of a “Holy City in Miniature” where the faithful could relive, in prayer, the moments of Christ’s life from the Passion to his death.
The monumental complex of the Sacro Monte di Varallo is expressed today in the basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary of the Assumption and in 43 chapels. There are two principle cores. The first core includes the first 19 chapels dedicated to the events which preceded the Passion: from the original sin to the Annunciation, from the Nativity to the flight in Egypt, from the resurrection of Lazarus to the entrance of Jesus in Jerusalem. The second core, with a more “urban” lay-out, makes Jerusalem, instead, the stage for the events in the Passion of the Christ: from the Last Supper to the arrest in the Garden of Olives, from Pontius Pilate to the whipping, from the journey to Calvary to the Crucifixion, and, finally, to the Holy Sepulcher. The point where these two paths meet is the Porta Aurea (Golden Gate), which represents the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem among the celebratory throngs.
Many artists contributed, over time, to the creation of this monument to faith, narrated by life-size wood and terracotta “actors”, among whom Gaudenzio Ferrari and Tanzio da Varallo stand out. The construction of the chapels ended in 1737 with the completion of the chapel dedicated to Sant’Anna in the Piazza dei Tribunali.
