Santuario Regina Montis Regalis di Vicoforte

The Sanctuary of Regina Montis Regalis at Vicoforte grew around a Marian image painted on a brick pillar. Its vast elliptical dome, designed by Francesco Gallo and completed in the eighteenth century, dominates the complex in the hills south of Turin.

Why it matters

The sanctuary brings together popular devotion and ducal ambition. Its central tempietto encloses the venerated image, while the unusually broad oval interior and its painted Marian cycle express the scale of the project. The dome is an important achievement of Baroque engineering and architecture.

What to notice

The dome's elliptical plan measures about 37 by 24 metres. Frescoes painted between 1745 and 1752 by Mattia Bortoloni and Felice Biella organize the Marian cycle in contrasting registers, from monochrome figures below to the celestial scenes above. At the crossing, Francesco Gallo's tempietto shelters the original pillar bearing the Madonna and Child. The exterior combines local golden sandstone, copper roofing and four bell towers added in the nineteenth century.

Context and history

Devotion to the painted pillar is documented from the 1590s. In 1594 the bishop of Mondovì authorized a chapel around the image, and an elliptical sanctuary was inaugurated in 1596 in the presence of Duke Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy. Ercole Negri di Sanfront and Ascanio Vitozzi contributed to the early design. After Vitozzi's death in 1615, construction slowed while builders addressed the structural challenges of the oval dome and unstable ground. Francesco Gallo reorganized the structure in the early eighteenth century; the dome was closed in 1731–32 and its lantern completed in 1733. The church was consecrated in 1777. The attached monastery was established for the Cistercian community installed by the duke in 1596.