Cappella di Sant'Anna

Alone in the shade of a wooded slope near the borgata Torricella stands an octagonal chapel of 1903, raised on the site of an ancient pillar of Sant'Anna. Its founding story joins a drought, a three-day pilgrimage to Savona in 1506, and a storm from which not a single pilgrim got wet.

Why it matters

The chapel of Sant'Anna preserves one of the Langhe's most vivid devotional legends in architectural form. In 1506, drought gripped the region; the people of La Morra organised a penitential pilgrimage to the apparition shrine of the Vergine della Misericordia at Savona, a three-day journey passing through Barolo, Monforte, Bossolasco and Millesimo. On the return, a violent storm caught the pilgrims near Torricella, close to an old pillar dedicated to Sant'Anna. Sheltering in prayer, they came through untouched — "neppure un pellegrino si bagnò", records the account, not a single pilgrim got wet — and the faithful of La Morra and Monforte built a chapel on the pillar's site in gratitude. The vow that followed still binds the two communities every seven years.

What to notice

The chapel has an octagonal plan, unusual among Monforte's rural chapels, most of which are simple rectangular halls. The current building dates to its 1903 reconstruction, the latest of several on the pillar site. It stands alone at the base of a wooded escarpment near Torricella. The local tradition connects the pillar of Sant'Anna with the Torricella crossroads where the storm struck and the historic route toward Barolo and La Morra. The seven-year vow also links it to the chapel of the Madonna delle Sette Vie: accounts describe La Morra's faithful meeting Monforte's community there before the two groups continued together to Sant'Anna.

Context and history

The sanctuary-chapel grew from a vow made in the early 16th century and recorded in local tradition. The 1506 pilgrimage belonged to a wider movement of rain-penitential processions that crossed the drought-stricken Langhe that year, and the Savona apparition of the Vergine della Misericordia — the devotion that produced that city's great Renaissance shrine — was drawing pilgrims from across the region. The chapel that commemorated the Monforte episode was rebuilt more than once; the octagonal form visible today is the result of the most recent reconstruction, completed in 1903, on the same site as the ancient pillar. The seven-yearly procession associated with the vow links the communities of La Morra and Monforte in a centuries-old cross-town rite.