Sacro Monte is located in an extraordinary landscape setting, on a wooded promontory jutting out into Lake Orta. A devotional itinerary of Twenty chapels immersed in nature illustrate episodes from the life of St Francis with sculptures and paintings, distributed along a path that winds along the summit of the mountain, opening up spectacular views of the lake and the island of San Giulio.
Construction work on the religious complex began in 1590 and continued for more than a century.
The statues and paintings on Sacro Monte compose scenes of great realism, where the intimate and natural atmospheres typical of early 17th century Lombard art are combined with the lively Baroque theatricality of the late 17th century.
In addition to the artists, the contribution of skilled local artisans who have left numerous testimonies of their industrious art by creating beautifully crafted wooden and wrought iron doors, grilles and gratings is also appreciable.
The territory of the Reserve is 13 hectares divided into two distinct areas: the slopes of the hill where broadleaf forests prevail and the monumental area where the vegetation has always been cared for as a historical garden.
Already the author of the Sacro Monte project studied not only the path between the chapels but also the environment and the vegetation. This created that unique relationship between nature, the spectacle of the lake, the greenery and the chapels that still characterises Sacro Monte today. The vegetation then changed over time, in relation to taste and also to the type of use of the complex, favouring more ornamental essences: beeches, lindens, oaks and Scots pines are now of considerable size.
Next to these, among the shrubs, mainly used as hedges along the paths and as joyful patches of colour within the vegetation, are boxwood, laurel and numerous holly trees.