AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of Miracles (Santuario della Beata Vergine dei Miracoli) in Cantù is the spiritual heart of this Lombard town and one of the Brianza region's most rewarding small artistic treasures. Born from a sixteenth-century famine miracle, it houses a rare surviving Gothic devotional image, magnificent Baroque frescoes by the Fiammenghino, and a canvas by Camillo Procaccini — all under a dome painted with a theatrical vision of the Assumption.↗↗
Free to enter and just a short walk from Cantù's center, the sanctuary rewards visitors who love layered histories: you can read five centuries of faith, art, disaster, and reconstruction in a single building.↗
A Miracle That Built a Sanctuary
The story begins in 1543, when the Brianza countryside was gripped by a devastating famine. Outside the old Porta di Campo Rotondo in Cantù stood a humble pillar bearing a painted image of the Virgin known locally as Santa Maria Bella — Beautiful Mary. A young peasant girl named Angiolina, desperate for her starving family, knelt before this image and prayed. According to tradition, the Virgin appeared to her in a white robe and told her to go home and tell her people to reap the rye, which had miraculously ripened out of season. The grain saved the village, the miracle spread across the territory, and a manuscript from the period records over a hundred further wonders attributed to this image — earning it the title Madonna dei Miracoli.
