Santuario della Madonna del Monte

The Sanctuary of the Madonna del Monte stands on the wooded slope above Marta. Rebuilt by the community in 1460, it is closely associated with the Barabbata, the town's annual May festival of offerings to the Virgin.

Why it matters

The festival is documented in a town-council minute of 1557 and remains one of Marta's defining traditions. The sanctuary gives this communal devotion a physical centre above the town. Its history links the local celebration to centuries of worship at the hilltop church.

What to notice

The limestone portal is carved with a vine scroll populated by birds and fish. Two angels on the architrave hold the sun-and-IHS emblem of Saint Bernardino of Siena. An inscription above records the date 1485 and names Petrus Farnesius as commissioner. Inside the single-naved church are three Baroque altars around a Marian image of the Eleusa type, along with a surviving fresco of Saints Simeon and Rocco. The convent cloister preserves stone columns, a well and an American cannon muzzle offered in 1945; a small museum holds the painted candles of the four festival guilds.

Context and history

Local accounts trace an early church and convent to Benedictine monks, who had left by about the twelfth century. The community rebuilt the complex in 1460, and the church was reconsecrated in 1485. In 1574 the Minims of Saint Francis of Paola took charge of the convent; after the religious order left during the Napoleonic suppressions, the property passed through other hands before being ceded to the parish in 1996. The Barabbata grew alongside the sanctuary: fishermen joined the procession in 1608, and the Passate ritual circuits took shape in the eighteenth century. The legend of a baker's daughter whose vision led the oxen carrying the Madonna uphill belongs to the sanctuary's devotional tradition.