Santuario Maria Santissima dei Miracoli

Just outside the ancient walls is the largest Renaissance church in the Trasimeno area, that was built in 1500 and dedicated to Maria Santissima dei Miracoli after a miraculous event which in the following century was followed by a second miracle.
The author of the Sanctuary is unknown. Today it is believed to be the work of an artist perhaps influenced by the Sienese Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who at that time was completing the monumental temple of Santa Maria delle Grazie al Calcinaio, near Cortona, a building to which this Sanctuary is alike.

The main façade overlooks the village and is divided by a very protruding cornice. The rose window, and the main door and all the decorations are in pietra serena (a local grey stone) and were carved by skilled Lombard stonemasons including Domenico Bertini, a pupil of Michelangelo. The church, whose base is a Latin cross, contains 4 niches with altars in the nave that is unique and two chapels in the transepts, all enriched by friezes in pietra serena, paintings, statues, whose merits and stories are pleasantly told in the various stages dedicated to them in the QR code itinerary.The insights of the various stages include historical notes, iconography and many curiosities.

In the painting of the Madonna del Rosario – the beautiful canvas painted in 1558 by the Florentine Bernardo di Girolamo Rosselli – is depicted the appearance of the village in 1500 with the original bell tower of the Sanctuary, which suddenly collapsed in 1910. The name of Giovan Battista Caporali and his workshop is mentioned for the fresco dated 1519 and depicting the Coronation of Mary, assumed into heaven. The statue of St. Anthony the Abbot, in painted stone, with the piglet following him like a little dog deserves listening to further info in the QR code App.

Beautiful is the story of the painting of the Virgin nursing the Divine Son and the temple that was erected inserting the original wall that contained it in the left transept. Next to the church there is a well that pre-existed the Sanctuary. The story tells that in the year 1940 the young maid of the parish priest Don Mariotto went there to draw water. All of a sudden a mysterious woman appeared from the bush nearby and asked her to build a chapel for the faithful at that very point. The apparitions were repeated, but poor Marietta was taken as a visionary. Until the “Lady” manifested to the incredulous inhabitants her true nature: the girl returned home with the jug on her head upside down, but still full of water. The inhabitants of the Castle, crying out for a miracle, ran to the bush to cut the thorns and discovered that it hid the remains of an old ruined wall on which there was a fresco with the image of the Virgin nursing her divine son. The place became a pilgrimage destination, it is said of miraculous healings, of vows fulfilled. The population consented to the realization of Her desire, thus building not a simple chapel but a more imposing building. The chapel of the left transept incorporates the ancient original wall with the fresco. In the left transept another event linked to the most holy crucifix in which the divine will was recognized is also depicted.