Our Lady of Oropa

In the amphitheater of the Belarusian Alps

To get to the Sanctuary of Oropa you have to go up. We always have to go up. From Biella - the textile city of Piedmont, known in all Italy for its wool industry - a mountain road is seeping for 14 kilometers between chestnuts and fences, gaining altitude with each curve, to reach 1,159 meters above sea level where the Oropa Valley suddenly opens in a natural amphitheater of extraordinary beauty.

The valley is locked in by rocky walls of biellese granite - the same grey granite with which the buildings of the sanctuary are built - that protect it from the winds and give it a peculiar microclimate: fresh in summer, snow in winter, always humid with benign humidity that keeps the green of the meadows and constant rumor of the streams. In the center of this natural amphitheater, the shrine complex extends as a miniature city: churches, squares, cloisters, hospices, pilgrims' houses, a hotel, a library, a museum. All built in grey and white granite, all gravitating around the Old Basilica where the image of the Black Virgin is venerated.

The Sanctuary of Oropa is, next to the Holy Mount surrounding it, UNESCO World Heritage since 2003, as part of the whole of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy. It is one of the most important Marian shrines in Northern Italy.

San Eusebio de Vercelli and the origins of the 4th century

The tradition that attributes the foundation of the Sanctuary of Oropa to San Eusebio de Vercelli is very old, although historians point out that it lacks contemporary documentation that supports it. According to this tradition, Eusebio - the bishop of Vercelli since about 340, one of the great advocates of the Nicena orthodoxy against the arrianism in the fourth century - placed in the valley of Oropa an image of the Virgin with the Child brought from Palestine or Egypt, in order to promote the evangelization of the populations of the mountains that were still largely pagan.

San Eusebio is a historical figure of the greatest importance in the Church of the 4th century. Contemporary and friend of Saint Athanasio of Alexandria - the great champion of the divinity of Christ in front of the Arians - Eusebio paid his fidelity to the Council of Nicea: he was exiled several times by the emperors favorable to arrianism and died in Vercelli in 371 after a life of suffering for faith. The connection of this great bishop with the mountain sanctuary raises the historical dignity of the place, although the documented history of Oropa as a sanctuary begins in fact in the Middle Ages.

The first written documents that mention the sanctuary date back to the 14th century, and in them the place already appears as an established centre of Marian devotion, with a chapel and a community of pilgrims who regularly came from Biella and the surrounding valleys.

The Black Virgin: the Gothic image of the 14th century

The image that is being venerated today in the Old Basilica of Oropa is a Gothic size that specialists date back to the first half of the 14th century. It is 42 centimeters high and represents the Virgin enthroned with the Child Jesus in her arms: an image of serene majesty, typical of the medieval iconographic tradition of the Sedes Sapientiae - the Throne of Wisdom, in which the Virgin is the living throne on which the Son of God is made man.

The most striking feature of the image - the one that has given it name in all the popular devotion of the Piedmont - is the dark color of the size. The Virgin of Oropa is a Madonna Black, a Black Virgin: the face, hands and neck of the size are dark, with a color that goes from intense brown to almost black. This darkening, common in many medieval images of the Virgin of all over Europe, is probably due to the combination of the nature of wood, the original varnish and centuries of sails smoke. However, the popular tradition interprets it in another way: the darkness of the image is the sign of its antiquity, of its travels from the Holy Land, of the accumulation of the prayer of generations of faithful.

The image is currently dressed in a splendid mantle embroidered in silver and gold that covers the entire body of the Virgin and the Child, leaving visible only the dark face. This dressing of medieval images is characteristic of the great Marian Italian shrines and expresses the devotion of the faithful who over the centuries have offered their jewels and their tissues to the Mother of God.

The first coronation of Italy: August 30, 1620

The most important date in the documented history of the Sanctuary of Oropa is August 30, 1620. On that day, Bishop Giacomo Goria, with the assistance of the canon Francesco Sforza Pallavino, solemnly crowned the image of the Virgin of Oropa with a crown of gold and precious stones. It was the first episcopal coronation of a Marian image documented in Italy, even before the famous coronation of the Virgin of Loreto.

The importance of this primacy is not only of a chronological order. It means that as early as 1620 the Sanctuary of Oropa had reached such spiritual relevance that the ecclesiastical authorities of the Piedmont decided to give the highest honor that the Church can give to an image of the Virgin: the coronation, which is a symbol of Mary's universal motherhood and her reign over the hearts of the faithful.

The 1620 coronation opened a tradition that Oropa renews approximately every hundred years. The second coronation, also solemn, was held in 1720. The third, in 1820. The fourth, in 1920. The fifth, in 2020 - the year of the centenary of the last coronation - was celebrated in the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID19 pandemic, but was not suspended: the Church of Biella renewed the secular gesture of placing the crown on the head of its Black Virgin on the mountain.

The monastic complex: a city in the mountain

What makes Oropa unique among the Marian shrines of Italy is not only the image or its antiquity: it is the architectural ensemble that surrounds it, which turns the valley into something that looks more like a municipality than a sanctuary. The complex of Oropa is, in the full sense of expression, a sacred city of high mountain.

In the heart of the whole is the Old Basilica - the original church of the sanctuary, built between the 14th and 17th centuries on the foundation of the ancient chapel - where the image of the Black Virgin is venerated. It is a church of medium dimensions, of grey granite, with the interior decorated with vows, votive paintings and silver lamps offered over the centuries.

Next to it is the New Basilica, in a neoclassical style, built between 1885 and 1958, with a dome that dominates the whole and an interior of white marbles that hosts the most solemn celebrations. Between the two basilicas, the cloister and the lower square create a space of circulation and encounter that on the days of pilgrimage is filled with Belarusian families and pilgrims arrived from all over the Piedmont.

Around this religious core, the complex unfolds its reception functions: there are more than 250 rooms for pilgrims distributed in several buildings built between the 15th and 20th centuries; there is a hotel that welcomes visitors; there is a pharmacy, a library with historical funds, a museum that retains the most valuable exvotes, and several community-based buildings. All in granite, all integrated into the alpine landscape with an architectural sobriety that makes the whole one of the most beautiful examples of sacra architecture in the Italian mountain.

The Holy Mount: the mysteries of the Virgin in stone and terracotta

Surround the sanctuary, through the trails that ascend through the forests of the valley, the Sacred Monte di Oropa unfolds its twelve vocal chapels dedicated to many other episodes of the life of the Virgin. The tradition of the Sacri Monti - the sacred mountains of chapels with scenes of the life of Christ or of the Virgin represented by figures of natural size - is a spiritual and artistic creation of the northern part of Italy, which emerged in the 16th century as a devout response of the Counter-Reformation.

The twelve chapels of Oropa were built from 1620 - the same year of the first coronation - and house in total hundreds of statues of natural-sized polychrome terracotta that represent the scenes with a surprising realism. The figures were the work of the best sculptors and painters of the Piedmont of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

The path of the chapels can be walked by signposted paths across the forest. For pilgrims, to walk the chapels is to pray the rosary in stone, wood and terracotta, with eyes open to the visible representation of the meditated mysteries.

The shelter of the House of Savoy

The Sanctuary of Oropa has a narrow history with the House of Savoy, the dynasty that ruled the Piedmont and then the Kingdom of Italy until 1946. The dukes and kings of Savoy considered the Virgin of Oropa as her special protector and the patron of her dynastic house.

This devotion had very important concrete consequences: the Savoy financed the construction and beautification of the sanctuary with generous donations over the centuries. When the royal family needed refuge in times of danger - plague epidemics in the valley, wars, threats of invasion - it was Oropa where they went up. The mountain sanctuary was the place that was unbeatable: far from the world, protected by altitude and devotion, guarded by the Black Virgin.

The chapel dedicated to the House of Savoy in the complex conserves memories and vows of the royal family: uniforms, votive crowns, jewels offered to the Virgin in times of danger.

The pilgrimage on foot from Biella

The oldest and most vivid tradition of devotion to the Virgin of Oropa is the pilgrimage on foot from Biella, which covers the 14 kilometers of gap between the city of the plain and the mountain sanctuary. This pilgrimage - which the Belarusian simply call "walk out for Oropa" - has its roots in the vote that the city of Biella made to the Virgin of Oropa during a serious epidemic of plague in the 17th century.

When the epidemic ceased, the Belarusian fulfilled their vote by going up in a solemn procession to the sanctuary to give thanks. This procession has been repeated since then from generation to generation, and today is celebrated annually with an influx of thousands of pilgrims who leave at dawn from the centre of Biella and arrive at the sanctuary in the middle of the morning, after a two or three hour march along the road and the valley trails.

The ascending procession is silent at first, when the most contemplative pilgrims prefer the recuperation of the alpine dawn. It is encouraged with the rosary prayed aloud when the groups are in the most steep sections. And it ends in the sanctuary square with the song of the Salve Regina - the oldest Marian anthem in the West - before the image of the Black Virgin.

Oropa today: UNESCO Heritage and Living Life

The Sanctuary and the Holy Mount of Oropa have been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003, as part of the group of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy. International recognition confirms what the Pyamonths have always known: that Oropa is not only a place of devotion, but one of the most extraordinary sets of architecture, sculpture and spirituality in Europe.

The sanctuary receives between 500,000 and 1 million visitors a year. Among them are the pilgrims in a strict sense - who come to venerate the image, to make their confession, to fulfill a vote - and the tourists who come attracted by the beauty of the complex, the landscape and the Holy Mount. The two motivations are not excluded: many tourists find in Oropa something they did not expect, a dimension of silence and recollection that the sacred space of the mountain provides with generosity.

The Black Virgin of Oropa - the dark and serene image that St. Eusebio has placed in this alpine valley sixteen centuries ago - continues to receive those who go up. Coronado with gold, dressed in embroidery silver, immobile on its medieval wooden throne, she is the stable center of a place that has seen kings and peasants pass, epidemics and wars, coronations and walking pilgrimages. And it will continue here, in the granite amphitheater of the Belarusian Alps, when those who rise today are just one more name in the book of visitors to the oldest shrine of Piedmont.