Santuario di Monte Berico Site Features

The church is essentially two churches sharing a site: the fifteenth-century Gothic building and Borella's Baroque basilica of 1688 built over and around it, so that moving through the interior means moving between two periods.

The Baroque exterior is a domed basilica with a broad terrace in front, sited so the whole composition reads from the city below -- it was designed to be looked at from Vicenza as much as visited.

The Portici are the real architectural event. Muttoni's arcade climbs the hill in a long curve, punctuated by chapels marking the Mysteries of the Rosary, and its rhythm of repeated arches turns the ascent into a measured procession rather than a walk.

The Portici climb

Around 150 arches over 700 metres, covered the whole way, with the city dropping away below as you rise.

Veronese's Supper of St Gregory the Great

A vast 1572 canvas in the refectory, slashed by Austrian troops in 1848 and restored. Most visitors miss it because it is not in the church itself.

The terrace view

Vicenza laid out below, the Veneto plain beyond, and on clear days the Alps along the northern horizon.

The 1848 ossuary

A memorial to the battle fought across this hillside, on the summit behind the church.

Monte Berico is the northernmost spur of the Colli Berici, rising directly from the southern edge of Vicenza. The hill is wooded on its far side and terraced on the city side, and the sanctuary sits on the shoulder facing the town.

From the terrace, the whole plain opens northward, with Villa La Rotonda and Villa Valmarana ai Nani on the slopes just to the east -- all three are walkable in one circuit.