Santuario di Pobiano della Santissima Trinita'

On the first slopes of Monte Bisbino above Carate Urio, the Sanctuary of Pobiano of the Holy Trinity is a small hillside church rebuilt in 1932 by a silk industrialist, sheltering a faded fifteenth-century fresco of the Trinity and a reproduction of the Lourdes grotto. The sanctuary stands among meadows and woods overlooking the lake.

Why it matters

Pobiano is where Carate Urio's devotional life climbs away from the lake. The sanctuary occupies a clearing among meadows and woodland on the lower slopes of Monte Bisbino, and its present form is the work of Pietro Amedeo Taroni, the local industrialist who founded the oldest silk mill in the area still active — a direct link between the town's industrial history and its faith. The focal image inside, a fresco of the Holy Trinity believed to date from the fifteenth century and to have come from the original building, gives the site a history reaching well beyond its twentieth-century reconstruction.

What to notice

The single altar is made of Vicenza marble, with a faded fresco of the Santissima Trinità above it, treated as the devotional image of the earlier church. Wooden statues from Val Gardena depict Saint Rita of Cascia and Saint Anthony of Padua. Two canvases by Carlo Maria Mauri depict the Beata Vergine del Rosario in the Madonna di Pompei iconography and Saint Oswald the martyr. Mauri also painted a crucifix on the exterior and the coats of arms of the former Comune di Urio and the Taroni family in the priests' house of 1932, together with a Latin inscription recording Taroni's foundation. A reproduction of the Lourdes grotto stands in the grounds.

Context and history

The sanctuary stands at Pobiano, a hamlet in the hills near Cavadino. The current church rose over an earlier rectangular structure when Taroni had it renovated in 1932, and the same campaign built the priests' house, whose painted crests and inscription — "Religiosa Fides – In honorem S.S. Trinitatis – Hanc domum erexit" — still document the patron's role.

Taroni's involvement matters for understanding the place: he was the founder of the oldest silk mill still operating in the area, and his patronage turned a modest rural chapel into the sanctuary complex seen today. The Comune di Carate Urio includes the sanctuary among its listed sites.