To be seen

An association, such as the present one, which boasts the expression pro loco, already in the header explicitly declares, without reservations, that it intends to operate exclusively for the benefit of the local community of Caprino Veronese: alien to ulterior motives, private interests.

Common expression of a vital associationism which, in the various connotations, characterizes our generous populations, is identified, however, for the attention, in particular, reserved for the enhancement, promotion of the Caprinese territory in its landscape, environmental, historical-artistic aspects . Thus the Pro Loco becomes an active protagonist of countless initiatives aimed at the conservation and enhancement of a heritage that we also want to share and among these is the project "The paths of the Crown".

WAY OF THE MONKS

From the Hermitage of San Giorgio to the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Corona

Presentation 

The “I cammini della Corona” project was born from the declaration of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism which proclaimed 2019 as the “National Year of Slow Tourism”.

Slow tourism is a niche tourism that offers itself as an alternative to "everything and immediately" or "hit and run" tourism because it presupposes walking at a pace that allows you to look around, allowing yourself time to observe, savor, admire and to live the experience of a place by "listening" to its stories.

The historical, cultural, religious and also food and wine richness of our territory can thus be made available to those who intend to live an "intimate" experience (even if not necessarily alone) and believe that walking at a "slow step" is a philosophy in which the legs are indeed the vehicle but it is the whole person who comes into play; the path itself gives us a sense of freedom which is also a look (not just a casually and quickly seeing), a discovery of a territory, an awareness of what it is or was, a relationship with people and "things" who meet and discover each other.

The "The paths of the Crown" project is based precisely on the paradigm of "slow walking" and is based on two cornerstones of our territory: the Camaldolese hermitage of Bardolino and the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Corona.

We have therefore thought of various itineraries which, starting from different directions (the upper lake of Garda, the lower lake, the hills of Rivoli, Ferrara di monte Baldo), arrive at these two nerve centers of the territory with a series of variations which often , intersecting with each other, allow the traveler to choose his own "path".

In addition to the splendid natural landscapes that accompany it, the "walker" enters into a relationship with a historical, artistic, spiritual heritage, given by the numerous medieval churches, the capitals, the votive crosses, but also by the palaces, villas, monuments, from fountains and washhouses: from everything that our ancestors built and left us as a legacy so that we could "enjoy" it with conscience and responsibility.

Finally, in the more or less long journeys, moments of rest and places cannot be missing, which we have duly taken steps to identify and report, where to stop and rest; refresh yourself, tasting the typical products, to "taste" our splendid territory, and, perhaps, even spend the night.

Walter Pericolosi

Preface

The so-called religious tourism is still the most widespread tourism that moves masses of faithful of all denominations all over the world. It is a general, transversal phenomenon that does not only concern the Christian universe, in particular the Catholic one, and finds its motivations, well beyond the purely tourist aspect of travelling, visiting-knowing, in a necessity, by man always warned, of a supernatural help in the dangers, in the calamities that the simple fact of existing entails; of a comfort to the evils, to the sufferings of the soul and of the body.

So since the origins of Christianity, perhaps also prompted by hagiographic narrations, there has been a flow of devotees who set off to go to the places where the sacred relics or the buried remains of the saints were kept. In Verona, to remain in an area close to us, since the beginning of the fifth century the bishop Petronius wrote of how to the tomb of Zeno, the patron saint of the city, a crowd of devotees, afflicted in body or soul, came to implore his help and how he prodigiously healed the sick, cleansed souls of sin, restoring the joy of purity.

Obviously since then the opportunity for profit that such flows of devotees entailed could not have been ignored, an aspect certainly profane but of substance. I will recall, saying of a saint also close to us, Adelaide, a prisoner on the fortress of Garda, that, once she received her mortal remains, the monks of the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul, at Seltz in Alsace, promptly arranged to draw up a Liber miraculorom, where the miracles performed by the saint were narrated: a text specifically for the use of pilgrims, to encourage their devotion, visits and… donations.

In less distant times, the spread of the cult of the Virgin and the proliferation of venerated sanctuaries is known to all, such as, always in a local area, those of the Madonna della Corona in Spiazzi, of the Madonna del Frassino in Peschiera, of the Beata Vergine del Soccorso in Marciaga. In these not only single devotees gathered, but even entire communities, as we know of the people of Bardolino who in 1665 went in procession to the sanctuary of the Crown to invoke rain. Once the pardon was obtained, a famous picture was painted as an ex voto to hand down its memory.

It was such a heavy fulfillment that not even death could undo. Thus in wills of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is not uncommon for testators to disposition that their heirs are required, personally or through substitutes, to satisfy the vow of a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Madonna of Loreto, to the basilica of Sant'Antonio di Padua, but also to the church of the Madonna della Corona which they had not been able to maintain in life.

And today, despite the detachment from spiritual values, we are still tempted to make ourselves pilgrims and seek consolation in our day, when they assail us dark and threatening.

 Giuliano Sala

The sanctuary of the Madonna della Corona

The popular legend

On a June night in 1522, some inhabitants of Baldo noticed intense flashes of light coming from the rocks around the Corona, an uninhabited, very impervious and practically unreachable place. These, amazed and intrigued by that light, stretched out, looking out on the rocky heights below, and heard a sweet melody coming from below. Thus, even more amazed, they felt the need to ascertain what was happening and to "unravel" that mystery!

At the time there were no passable paths, the rocky walls were inaccessible: the only way to reach the place, where the light and the delicate melody came from, was to let oneself be lowered through knotted ropes. And here, the stratagem implemented, the surprise: a statue of the Madonna, with the dead Christ on her knees, which gave off a "strange" light.

After moments of bewilderment, they dissolved in prayer and decided to hoist the beautiful statue high so that everyone could admire it and then placed it in a small chapel to which many faithful immediately flocked.

But the next day the statue was "disappeared": everyone looked for it, but no one was able to find it, until they decided to descend again from those rocks and... they miraculously found it in the previous day's place. Thus they brought it back to the chapel and again, during the night, the statue "returned" among the rocks.

The devout inhabitants then understood that this was the will of the Madonna and therefore, right where she had appeared, they built a brick aedicule to store the statue.

The rumor naturally spread and among the various pilgrims who flocked there were also some Jerusalemite knights who recognized in it the statue of the Madonna which suddenly disappeared from Rhodes in 1522, when the island had fallen into the hands of the Turks: the angels they would have transported her to the cliffs of Baldo.

Walter Pericolosi

 Historical-artistic notes on religious buildings and places of spirituality along "The path of the monks"

Hermitage of San Giorgio di Bardolino

The Camaldolese Congregation of Monte Corona, following donations, began the foundation of a hermitage on Mount San Giorgio di Bardolino which, completed in 1665, was erected as a priory in 1672. Suppressed in 1810 due to the Napoleonic provisions on monastic orders, the hermitage complex was purchased by Count Danese Burri who had the middle cells demolished, while the side cells were used as a residence for the peasants, employed in working the cultivated land. In 1885 the Congregation bought it back from the heirs together with all of Monte San Giorgio and sent monks again. These, except for a brief period between the years 1962-1972, remained there until in 1993 they were replaced by the Camaldolese monks of Tuscany to whom the hermitage had been granted on loan by the bishop of Verona. The monastic church, built in a moderately Baroque style on the ruins of an ancient oratory, has a single nave with a sacristy and three side chapels; the choir with 24 walnut stalls to welcome the friars in the recitation of the daily Divine Office is valuable. Among the paintings, which decorate the altars, we recall the altarpieces with the representations of San Giorgio and the dragon, by an unknown author and in the past erroneously attributed to Giovanni Tedeschi, of San Romualdo, the work of Palma il Giovane, and of the Virgin fra sant' Anne and Saint Joachim by Francesco Paglia.

Costermano German military cemetery

On the Le Guardie hill, in the locality of Baesse di Costermano, the ossuary cemetery built between the years 1956-1967 stretches out in a green setting dotted with heather. Here the bodies of over 22,000 German soldiers who fell in the last years of the Second World War were collected, taken from military cemeteries and occasional burial sites in northern Italy. The orderly rows of tombstones mark their burials in a warning against war and a yearning for peace. Recently the municipality of Costermano sul Garda has launched a project for the construction of an adjoining park, significantly called the People's Friendship Park.

Oratory of San Rocco di Pesina

The oratory of San Rocco, which overlooks the south side of the road that leads from Costermano to Pesina, has been documented since at least 1523 with the function of welcoming local people to the celebration of mass, especially farmers in the summer. Over time it underwent various renovations up to its present appearance with a neoclassical façade, a single hall, equipped with two side chapels, and a quadrangular apse, where the seventeenth-century altarpiece by Giovanni Ceschini is kept with the depiction of the titular saint; an elegant raised choir leans against the counter-façade. On the outside of the east wall rises the quadrangular bell tower, surmounted by an octagonal drum and a pyramidal brick cusp, with on the top a very ruined statuette that would have depicted San Rocco.

Oratory of Sant'Antonio abbot of Boi

The oratory of Sant'Antonio, now deconsecrated and used for profane uses, is documented in a will of 1441 in which a certain Fazio of the late Gisalberto da Pesina left four ducats for the purchase of a missal to be used in the church. The locality in which it is located also takes its name from the presence of this, mentioned in the papers at least since 1476. In the 16th century it was known to belong to the priory of Sant'Antonio della Ghiara in Verona and therefore to the Bishop's Seminary, after it had been granted the commendation of the ancient priory. Oratory and pertinent land thus remained the property of the seminary until in 1867, as a result of the so-called subversive laws of the ecclesiastical axis, they were confiscated by the Royal Property. Therefore, through public auction, they were put up for sale and purchased by private individuals; today it belongs to the Gentili family who use it for the winery.

Oratory of Santa Maria della Mercede di Boi

The oratory of Santa Maria della Mercede, formerly dedicated to San Giovanni, is documented by the pastoral visits of the 16th century, but the presence in the past inside of the famous polyptych attributed to the painter Altichiero, now in the Museum of Castelvecchio, suggests existence since at least the late fourteenth century. The current building in neo-Gothic style is the result of a radical restructuring carried out around the mid-nineteenth century by the Cattarinetti family, when the oratory also began to be known with the title of Santa Maria della Mercede, granted to it in honor of the Virgin by the community of Boi for having been preserved from the cholera contagion in 1836.

Oratory of Santa Eurosia of Rubiana

The oratory of Sant'Eurosia, protector from storms and also from droughts, was built in the years 1737-1742 on the initiative of the heads of families from the local districts of Balconi, Dosso de' Tononi and Guìn. In 1806, due to the Napoleonic decrees on the suppression of public oratories, the church was closed and confiscated by the Royal State Property Office, but was immediately reopened for worship by the locals. The neoclassical style building with an elegant gabled façade has a single hall, ending in the pentagonal apse, where an eighteenth-century canvas is preserved, depicting. Il martirio di sant’Eurosia.

 Palazzo Carlotti and the sculptural group of "The Lamentation"

Today's municipal seat of the municipality of Caprino Veronese, the palace was built on a fifteenth-century rural building by the noble Vimercati family who, then proceeding with an expansion of the building, removed all signs of a past connected with agricultural activity, in function of a magnification of aristocratic decorum. In 1601 the building was purchased by the canon Marcello Carlotti who left the architecture unchanged, dealing only with the pictorial decoration. Only in the early 18th century were the modifications made that determined its current appearance with the addition of the pediment, the balustrade on the sides and the left wing for reasons of symmetry. The self-celebratory intent of the owners, who entrust the expression of their prestige to the magnificence of the building, now predominates and the family coat of arms, which stands out in the tympanum of the pediment surmounting the central body, is a clear sign of this. Later, but still in the 18th century, the portico that opens onto the courtyard to the west was built.

Inside, in addition to the splendid rooms, among which the enchanting "Sala dei Sogni" emerges, entirely frescoed by Paolo Ligozzi and workshop in the early 1600s with "grotesques" and motifs of biblical, classical, but also contemporary inspiration, it is possible to admire in all its beauty the sculptural group from the mid-1300s, located there, from its original location in the church of the Holy Sepulcher, after the restoration operations by the hard stones factory in Florence. The group, attributed to the sculptor Rigino di Enrico, known as The Lamentation, more properly represents the deposition of Jesus in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus assisted by the pious women and the apostle John. Unlike other works of the time on a similar subject, the group denotes inconsolable pain and anguish in the features of the deceased Jesus and various characters; the horrible mask of death, no longer accepted in a Christian way with calm resignation as the beginning of a new life, sic moriar ut vivam, but now suffered as an excruciating detachment: a vision which, despite the religious theme of the theme, takes on the tones of a now secular feeling ahead of its time.

Oratory of San Martino in the Caprinese district of San Martino

The oratory of San Martino in the district of the same name has been documented since at least the beginning of the 13th century as a chapel of the parish church of Caprino, as can be seen from pastoral visits in the 16th century; then starting from 1568 it became subject to the newly established parish of Pazzon. The church, which in the past also had a small cemetery attached, served for centuries, despite the patronage of the nobles Brenzoni and Montagna on their respective altars, the population of the district who came there to attend Mass until in modern times it decayed into a simple oratory and today it is celebrated only occasionally. The building, although deprived of its façade with the addition of the house built against it in the 16th century, at the time for the use of the chaplain, shows clear signs of the original Romanesque construction in the nave and semicircular apse; subsequently, at the end of the 15th century, the chapel was added on the northern side to contain the altar erected by the noble Antonio Montagna; therefore in the following century a portico was placed on the southern side, supported by three pillars, from which the church was accessed via two entrances. The bell tower was built in the 18th century. Inside, the frescoes from the early 1400s stand out on the basin and the apse arch with depictions of Christ in a mandorla and of The Annunciation; on the outside, other frescoes from the early 14th century show the images of San Cristoforo and of San Martino and the beggar. Then a further votive painting, executed in 1512 commissioned by the Montagna family, depicts The Madonna enthroned with Child between Saints Sebastiano and Rocco, invoked for protection from the raging plague. Preserved inside are the altarpiece from the end of the 15th century of the Montagna chapel with Saints Francis, Anthony of Padua and Agapito and the frontal of the main altar, commissioned by Alessandro Brenzoni in 1513, with Saints Catherine of Alexandria, Martin and Lucia.

Oratory of San Martino (Video)

Oratorio di San Rocco di Gaon

Following the plague epidemic of 1511, the inhabitants of the district matured the intention of erecting an oratory in honor of San Rocco, protector from the disease. However, the vow went into oblivion and only the raging plague again in the summer of 1630 induced them to carry it out. In use by the Gaon community at least since 1634, it had two successive extensions over time, at the end of the 17th century and in the first decade of the last century, which resulted in an elongation towards the east; the elegant gabled façade in classic style remains from the original building. In a niche, carved into the tympanum of the pediment, there is a seventeenth-century stone statuette, depicting the titular saint.

Oratory of the Blessed Virgin of Carmel in Vilmezzano

The existence of an oratory dedicated to San Bernardino da Siena has been known since the late 1400s; then in the following century the title was changed in honor of the Madonna del Carmelo whose statue was carried in procession to the sanctuary of the Beata Vergine del Soccorso in Marciaga. In 1703 the church was devastated by the Franco-Spanish soldiers during the war of the Spanish succession, but it was promptly restructured and, in particular, equipped with a new Baroque-style altar, where the altarpiece with the Madonna and Child between angels and the Saints Sebastian, Anthony of Padua, Bernardino and Rocco, Sebastian and Anthony of Padua, work of 1723 by an unknown author. Alienated to the Royal Property following the Napoleonic suppressions, the oratory was then returned to worship. Decorated in 1914 by the Art Nouveau frescoes by the Garda painter Antonio Pimazzoni, the church retains the beautiful lines of the eighteenth-century renovation with a gabled façade, single hall, side chapel and polygonal apse. The old sacristy attached to the south side now serves as a winter chapel.

Oratory of the Immaculate Conception of Braga

The oratory of the Immaculate Conception, perched on a rocky outcrop near the district of Braga, was built in neo-Gothic style in 1938 to meet the spiritual needs of the locals, disadvantaged by the distance from the parish church of Pazzon. Struck by lightning in 1975, the church was promptly restored and reopened for worship in August 1976.

Sanctuary of the Madonna della Corona

Already in the late 12th century hermits would have founded a first small church at the Crown of Monte Baldo, documented at least since 1203 as dependent on the Veronese monastery of San Zeno, on which the Marian sanctuary would have developed. From 1437 the possessions in the Montebaldina area of ​​the monastery of San Zeno were acquired by the Knights of Rhodes, later of Malta, so it can be deduced that the church of the Corona also passed under the orders. The dependence will therefore continue uninterruptedly until the end of the eighteenth century and in that time there will be the various restructuring of the church, the factories of the annexed buildings, the works to facilitate access and an impulse to the cult for the sacred image of the Madonna della Pietà, near the sanctuary has been present at least since the third decade of the 1500s.

After Malta surrendered to the French fleet during the Napoleonic wars, the sanctuary was acquired in 1806 by the Veronese bishop and with a decree dated June 12, 1812, Bishop Innocenzo Liruti assigned it to the Ferrara parish of Montebaldo. This maintained its jurisdiction until 1905 when Cardinal Bartolomeo Bacilieri separated it from the parish and granted it an autonomous rector. Finally, in 1966, the bishop Msgr. Giuseppe Carraro entrusted the management of the sanctuary to the Episcopal Seminary of Verona which since then has taken care of sending rectors there and providing for its governance. In 1982 the church was declared a basilica by Pope John Paul II who then visited it on April 17, 1988.

Giuliano Sala