Our Lady of Peace

La escalinata del Rosario · São Miguel (Azores)

On the mountain that dominates Vila Franca do Campo, in São Miguel, a long zigzag staircase goes up to the shrine of Nossa Senhora da Paz. In their rest, the tiles of the mysteries of the Rosary turn the ascent into a prayer.

Origin and history

Local tradition tells that a pastor found an image of the Virgin in a grotto of the mountain; he took her to the village, but the image "returned" to the mountain, a sign that she wanted her dwelling there. A first hermitage already existed before 1522, the date of the great earthquake and landslide that destroyed part of Vila Franca. The present Baroque temple dates from 1764, raised on the previous hermitage.

The great monumental staircase in zigzag was built between 1967 and 1968: its ten breaks ("skates") carry tiles with the joyful and painful mysteries, the breaks represent the Padrenueres and the hundred steps the Avemarias, so that going up to the sanctuary is to pray the Rosary. In April 2024 the diocese of Angra approved its elevation to diocesan sanctuary, culminating on 1 January 2025.