This 17th-century sanctuary is reached by a short staircase, leaving the driveway to the right. The present name is linked to the Marian devotion for the escape of the plague in 1759, which since the 1960s has been linked to the dedication to the many emigrants who had to look elsewhere for the work that Cassiglio and the valley could no longer offer.
The first construction of the sanctuary dates back to 1630, the year of the terrible plague. It was built as a church for the plague victims, a place of isolation and burial for the plague victims. The church was completely rebuilt, lengthened and raised in the second half of the 19th century and dedicated to the Immaculate Madonna, whose dogma was proclaimed by Pope Pius IX on 8 December 1854, still the feast day today. The interior is bare and linear, with a single nave and a large reconstruction of the Lourdes grotto with statues of the Virgin and Bernadette, built in the 1960s. The balustrades and the floor are made of local marble to emphasise the people's attachment to their sanctuary. In the sacristy, the large carved and inlaid credenzone, built between 1731 and 1754, when the sacristy was built, is the work of the Rovelli di Cusio marangoni workshop. The bell tower, also erected at the end of the 19th century, in cement stone, culminates in the statue of the Immaculate Madonna, a work that recalls the Saint Bartholomew on the bell tower of the parish church, made in 1899 by the sculptor Eugenio Goglio di Piazza, better known as the photographer of the Valley. After the middle of the 20th century, the sanctuary was also dedicated to the memory of the many emigrants from Cassiglio who had left the village in previous decades for work, mainly to France. Every year the feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated on 8th December with a solemn mass and a procession from the sanctuary towards the village with the statue of the Madonna.
Italian