Salita alla Cupola - Magnificat

Magnificat is a guided ascent through the concealed structure of Vicoforte's great dome, passing behind the frescoes before emerging near the lantern. The dome is the world's largest elliptical dome.

Why it matters

The dome of the Regina Montis Regalis sanctuary is not merely the building's crowning feature; it was the reason an 18th-century generation of engineers earned their reputation. Walking the ascent means entering the problem itself — the timber and masonry layers, the geometry of the oval, the buttressing that finally allowed a span of this shape to stand.

The ascent brings visitors close to the fresco cycle painted in the 1740s, whose brushwork reads as abstraction from below.

What to notice

The ascent passes through service spaces and masonry passages, exposing the thickness of the sanctuary's walls. Higher up, daylight enters through the great oval windows designed by Francesco Gallo, and the frescoed surface comes into view at close range.

Openings along the ascent reveal the crossing and the tempietto that protects the medieval pilone. Near the lantern, the frescoed Assumption and views across the Cuneo plain toward the Maritime Alps become visible.

Context and history

The ascent exists only because the dome itself was a hard-won achievement. The oval plan had defeated builders since Vitozzi's scheme of the 1590s: the western piers rested on unstable clay and settled irreversibly during the early 17th century, cracking everything above them. Work resumed fitfully until the architect Francesco Gallo, engaged in the early 1700s, demolished the compromised elements and re-founded the whole problem — redesigning drum and dome, adding counterforts, and inventing the large oval windows that light the structure.

For the delicate operation of centring the new dome, Gallo called on Filippo Juvarra, the king's first architect, who arrived at Vico in spring 1728 and advised on the great timber framework, the "ponte reale", resting on six masonry pylons. The dome closed in 1731–1732 and the lantern rose in 1733. The scaffolding itself remained in place for the painters — Bortoloni and Biella painted the great field from it from 1745, and it was dismantled only in 1748, while Biella went on completing other painted surfaces until 1752. The ascent follows the structure that made the oval dome possible.