Varallo

Varallo sits where the Mastallone joins the Sesia, the capital of Valsesia and the gateway to the high valleys under Monte Rosa. The lower town gathers along the river confluence, ordinary and administrative, while the devotional complex occupies the rock above it, reached now by cable car but originally by a path of ascent that was itself part of the pilgrimage. The chapels were conceived as a reproduction of the geography of the Passion, laid out so that walking through them retraced a landscape rather than simply viewing scenes.

The complex grew over four centuries to its present scale, with more than eight hundred statues and four thousand frescoed figures distributed across the chapels and the basilica at their center. UNESCO inscribed the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy as a single serial site in 2003. What results is a town split in function between a valley capital going about its administrative life and a hillside set apart for a single sustained act of devotional theater, the two joined by a short vertical crossing that pilgrims once made on foot.