Sacro Monte di Varallo Sesia

Forty-three chapels bizarrely placed around a church: chapel in which you cannot enter; you can only look inside them through a wooden lattice. In each chapel is a scene from the life of Jesus: the Annunciation to the Resurrection, represented by hundreds of terracotta statues colored to their natural greatness on a curved background of frescoes and paintings which create the environments and crowds of people of the era. The execution of the works extends from the end of the 15th century to the 19th century; the frescoes, statues, and decorations were realized by important artists of different eras, like G. Ferrari, G.B. Benero, G.A. Orgiazzi, and various Flemish artists.

You will ask, "What is a 'Sacro Monte?'": between Piedmont and Lombardia there are 19, and in 2003 all were declared UNESCO World Heritage.
The story began at then end of the 15th century when a Franciscan monk, returning from Palestine, having passed through all of the bureaucratic difficulties (there were less, but they still existed even then) managed to go to Varallo to obtain land and to construct the first chapel dedicated to Santo Sepolcro. The mountain was intended as a place for man to get closer to heaven; the climb into the mountain was full of symbolic value, recalling the ascetic experience of San Francesco when he withdrew to Veina in contemplation of the Passion of Christ.
In addition, the idea was to reconstruct locations and happenings of Palestine in an era in which, after the fall of Constantinople under the Ottoman Empire, it was more difficult to go there on a pilgrimage. In the following centuries, a network of Sacri Monti developed all over Europe, introducing new themes of devotion.