On 7 March 1426, on the hill that rises immediately south of Vicenza, a countrywoman from Sovizzo named Vincenza Pasini said that the Mother of God had appeared to her there. The city did not believe her. Plague was in the streets, and the word of one woman changed nothing.
She came back. On 1 August 1428 she reported a second apparition on the same hill, and this time Vicenza listened: within days work had begun on a church at the summit. The tradition of the city holds that the sickness receded as the walls went up, was broken by the time the builders reached the roof, and had gone entirely by 1430, when the little church was finished. The hill has been called Monte Berico — the holy mountain of Vicenza — ever since.
Six hundred years later the Servite friars keep the sanctuary that grew from that chapel, and the Madonna di Monte Berico is the principal patroness of the city and of the whole Diocese of Vicenza. Pilgrims come up the hill on foot, as the Vicentines have always come, to pray before her image and at the crypt where Vincenza Pasini herself is buried, beneath the altar of the place she was told to build.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
The first apparition was not received. When Vincenza Pasini reported the second, on 1 August 1428, the city acted quickly: Bishop Pietro Emiliani laid the cornerstone on 25 August 1428, and the small church was raised in about three months. A convent followed in 1429. Plague was ravaging Vicenza through those months, and the citizens tied its retreat to the building itself — the chronicles say it was debellata, utterly defeated, by the time the roof went on, and gone from the city by 1430.
What makes the story unusual is that Vicenza wrote it down while the witnesses were alive. In November 1430 the city ordered a formal inquiry into what Vincenza Pasini had reported. The jurists Giovanni and then Luigi Da Porto took the evidence; three notaries and the Podestà Marco Micheli attested it; and the resulting sixteen-page notarized record is held in the Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana in Vicenza. For a medieval apparition, a contemporary legal file of that kind is rare.
Vincenza Pasini was born at Sovizzo, west of the city, around 1356. She was buried first beside the church of Santa Caterina in Vicenza; in 1810 her remains were carried up the hill and laid in the crypt beneath the sanctuary's high altar, where they rest today, directly under the place of the apparitions.
Custody of the shrine changed hands early. The Brigidines, the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of St Bridget, held it from the foundation in 1428 for about seven years. On 1 June 1435 the Servites — the Servants of Mary — arrived from Brescia under Fra Antonio da Bitetto, who is said to have come in answer to an interior call, and the Order has been identified with Monte Berico ever since. Its tenure was broken twice by politics rather than by piety: the friars were expelled in the Napoleonic suppression of 1810, returned in 1835, were displaced again briefly in 1866, and were permanently reinstated by the Vicenza city council in 1875.
The church the pilgrim enters today is the second one. The Gothic church of 1428 still stands, absorbed into and encased by the great baroque basilica built over it by Carlo Borella between 1688 and 1703; Andrea Palladio had enlarged the earlier building in 1578. On the high altar is the image itself, carved from the stone of these hills around 1428 by Nicolò da Venezia and painted — Mary shown, in the manner of her century, as Mother of Mercy. In 1900 Giuseppe Sarto, then Patriarch of Venice and later Pope St Pius X, solemnly crowned the statue, with a crown and a pearl necklace made by Vicentine goldsmiths.
The devotion was given its formal standing in the modern era in 1978, when Bishop Arnoldo Onisto proclaimed the Madonna di Monte Berico principal patroness of the city and diocese, a proclamation ratified by Pope Paul VI. Pope St John Paul II came up to the sanctuary on 7 September 1991 and prayed the rosary with the people on the piazzale before the basilica. In 2026 the diocese and the sanctuary keep the sixth centenary of the first apparition as a Marian jubilee year.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Monte Berico
The pilgrimage is one place: the sanctuary at the top of the hill, with its church, its crypt, its museum and the two historic ascents that lead up to it from the city below.
Basilica of Saint Mary of Monte Berico
Basilica di Santa Maria di Monte Berico
Two churches stand here as one. Carlo Borella's baroque basilica of 1688–1703 was built over and around the Gothic church of 1428, which survives inside it — so the pilgrim who walks from one to the other crosses three centuries without leaving the building. On the high altar is the fifteenth-century stone Madonna, crowned in 1900; beneath the altar, in the crypt, lie the remains of Vincenza Pasini, brought up the hill in 1810. The sanctuary's museum of sacred art keeps the ex-votos left here over the centuries — the plainest record there is of what people believed they had received. Mass and opening times are published on the sanctuary's own website.
Two ways climb to the doors, and both are part of the pilgrimage rather than merely the approach to it. The Portici, a covered arcade running seven hundred metres up the slope, was built in 1746 to the design of Francesco Muttoni so that pilgrims could make the ascent in any weather and without a step. The older way is the Scalette, the stair that begins at the monumental Arco delle Scalette in the city below, raised in 1595 for the Venetian official Giacomo Bragadin and attributed to Andrea Palladio. Before the basilica spreads the Piazzale della Vittoria, where the processions arrive and where the whole plain of the Veneto opens out beneath the hill.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Feast of the Madonna di Monte Berico — September 8
The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the patronal feast of the city and Diocese of Vicenza, kept since the 1978 proclamation as the Festa della Madonna di Monte Berico. It begins the evening before. On 7 September the diocesan pilgrimage climbs the Portici to the basilica, praying the rosary behind the bishop. The published hour varies from year to year — the diocese and the sanctuary announce it each summer.
The basilica then stays open all night as people come up on foot. A vigil begins before dawn, and Masses continue through the day, the solemn Mass in mid-morning attended by the civil and religious authorities of the city. Vicentines who make the climb take either the Portici or the Scalette. Around the religious day the city keeps its own: a fair with a funfair on the Campo Marzo, the Festa dei Oto, fills the days on either side.
First Sunday of the Month — the Nine Visits
Apart from the feast, Monte Berico has a monthly devotion of its own. Coming to the basilica on the first Sunday of each month, and on Our Lady's feasts, is held here to bring abundant graces — a practice the Servites describe as the "nine visits a year". It is a popular devotion rather than a liturgical observance, and it is the ordinary reason a Vicentine walks up the hill.
🛏️ Where to Stay
The sanctuary keeps no guesthouse. The Servite friars receive pilgrim groups for Mass and for guided visits, but nothing on the sanctuary's own site offers a room for the night, so pilgrims sleep in Vicenza and climb the hill in the morning. The historic centre is close enough to walk from, by the Portici or the Scalette.
Antico Hotel Vicenza ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — A four-star hotel in an early twentieth-century building on a pedestrian lane a few steps from Piazza dei Signori, in the heart of the historic centre; twenty-three rooms over four floors and a rooftop terrace. Website
Palazzo Scamozzi — A hotel in a palace of 1780 on Corso Palladio, the city's main pedestrian street, in the same quarter and at a comparable distance from the hill. Website
More hotels in Monte Berico on Booking.com →
Accommodation available to book near Monte Berico. Pilgrim houses and religious guesthouses are listed above — many take bookings directly and do not appear on booking sites.
🚗 Getting There
By Train: Vicenza station, on the Milan–Venice main line, is served by Trenitalia regional and long-distance trains from Padua, Venice, Verona and Milan. The sanctuary is about two kilometres away — walkable through the historic centre and up Viale X Giugno, or reachable by city bus.
By Car: Vicenza is on the A4 Milan–Venice motorway; the Vicenza Est exit serves the city. The piazzale in front of the basilica takes both cars and coaches.
On Foot: Two historic routes climb from the city, and either takes ten to fifteen minutes from Piazza dei Signori. The Scalette is a flight of 192 steps beginning at the Arco delle Scalette and rising by Via D'Azeglio to join the final stretch of arcade. The Portici is step-free and roofed the whole way, the better choice in rain, in heat, or with a pilgrim who cannot manage stairs.
Local Transport: SVT, the city's transport operator, runs urban line 18 between Viale Roma and Monte Berico. Timetables are on the SVT website.
📚 Further Reading
The title below is in Italian; no English-language book devoted to this sanctuary was found.
P. Possamai. Andrea Palladio e il Monte Santo di Vicenza. Santuario Monte Berico — A study of the sanctuary's building history and of the hill in the age of Palladio.
📿 Devotional Items
The image on the high altar was carved from the stone of the Berici hills around 1428 and painted, showing Mary after the fashion of her century as Mother of Mercy; the future Pope St Pius X crowned it solemnly in 1900.
Holy Virgin Mary Madonna Statue, 10 Inch (Vittoria Collection) — A painted sculpture made in Italy, in the same tradition of image-carving as the shrine's own fifteenth-century statue.
Madonna with Child Medal (I G J) — A silver-toned medal of Our Lady, made in Italy, to carry the devotion of Monte Berico beyond the hill.
Ghirelli Rosary, 8mm Wood and Steel Beads (Ghirelli) — From the historic Ghirelli workshop; the rosary is the prayer said aloud on the procession that climbs the Portici on the evening before the feast.
🎥 Recommended Videos
Supplica alla Madonna di Monte Berico — The sanctuary's own formal prayer of supplication, recited at the shrine. From the Servites' official channel. In Italian, 4 minutes.
Il Santuario di Monte Berico a Vicenza — A tour of the basilica and the hill, from the Italian Catholic broadcaster Tv2000. In Italian, 7 minutes.
Madonna di Monte Berico: migliaia di pellegrini in preghiera per la pace — Regional television coverage of the 8 September feast, filmed among the pilgrims at the sanctuary in 2025. In Italian, 2 minutes.
🔗 Useful Links
Sanctuary of Monte Berico — The sanctuary's own English-language pages, with the history of the two apparitions and the Servite custody.
Servi di Maria — the Servants of Mary at Monte Berico — The friars who have kept the shrine since 1435, the Order's origins and its community here today. In Italian.
Diocese of Vicenza — The diocesan page for the sanctuary, with its current address and contact details.
Vicenzaè — official tourism portal of Vicenza and its province — The consortium's page on the sanctuary, within its "places of faith" listing. In Italian.
Cammino dei Grandi Santuari Mariani — Official site of the Marian pilgrim route that begins at Monte Berico, with the map, the stages and the route's app.
🥾 Pilgrim Routes
Cammino dei Grandi Santuari Mariani — Monte Berico is the starting point, Tappa 1, of this Marian way through the Veneto and Trentino–Alto Adige; the first stage runs 18.7 km from the basilica to Montecchio. The route's 2026 launch report in Il Giornale di Vicenza set the whole way at fifteen stages, about 230 km, and roughly 9,000 m of ascent; the organiser's own GPX track, published on outdooractive.com, records 205 km and 7,052 m of ascent for the same start and end points — the two totals are not reconciled here. The way is waymarked and has a printed trail guide, a mobile app and identified hostels along it; no pilgrim credential is advertised. Its fourth stage ends 25 km away at Schio, where St Josephine Bakhita is buried. camminosantuarimariani.it
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Schio (25 km northwest) — The tomb of St Josephine Bakhita, the Sudanese slave who became a Canossian sister, lies beneath the altar of the church of the Holy Family. Schio is also the fourth stage of the Cammino dei Grandi Santuari Mariani, the route Monte Berico opens.
Padua (30 km southeast) — The Basilica of St Anthony, il Santo, holds the tomb of the Wonderworker and draws six million pilgrims a year, the most visited shrine in Italy outside Rome.
Verona (45 km west) — The Basilica of St Zeno the Great, the city's patron-bishop, anchors one of northern Italy's richest concentrations of Romanesque and Renaissance sacred art.
Venice (63 km east) — The relics of St Mark rest in the golden basilica of the lagoon, alongside those of St Lucy and St Zacharias, in a Patriarchate that has given the Church three popes.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"Show yourself, Mother! Show yourself, Mother of those who suffer and long for justice and peace."
— Pope St. John Paul II, Invocation to the Madonna di Monte Berico, September 7, 1991
