Alassio – Santuario Madonna della Guardia English

The Shrine of Our Lady of the Guard is an ancient shrine. The religious building is located on the highest peak of the mountain ridge 586 meters above sea level Tirasso It dominates the town of Alassio and its gulf. The sanctuary is part of the diocese of Albenga-Imperia. On the site existed since the Middle Ages a fortress, the castrum Tiraculi, belonging to the municipality of Albenga he kept a guardian. Become the property of the Benedictines in the twelfth / thirteenth century. inside was built a chapel dedicated, according to tradition, to the Stella Maris, invoked by seafarers The castle was demolished in 1427. In the '600 the ruins were excavated to make way for the new sanctuary, with a single hall, built on the primitive , which remains with the lower part of the semicircular apse. The occasion was enriched with a fine white marble altar decorated with statues of the Assumption, two large angels and Christ ascending to heaven, then dismembered in the nineteenth century. Beside small cells were built for the hermits which was entrusted with the sanctuary, the famous "hermits" Guard, the last of which is remembered around 1830. In 1865 was built the semicircular apse, lit by two side windows, and added the entrance porch. Important new work took place in the 50s and 70s of the last century, at the behest of Bishop. Innocent De Ferrari, then provost of the parish of St. Ambrose of Alassio, on which the church, he considered the sanctuary as the "spiritual lung" of the local Church. It was erected the bell tower, 21 meters high, and the church was converted into three naves, with the construction of a new building on the left side and the reuse of old quarters as the right aisle. The decoration of the time was held to mark the Jubilee of 2000. The original title is of the Assumption, which was dedicated to the church of Notre-Dame de la Garde in Marseille; only in the twentieth century it is identified with that of Mount Figogna, at Genoa, where the Blessed Virgin appeared to Benedetto Pareto 29 and August 30, 1490, episode remembered by a wooden sculpture preserved in the apse of the left aisle. The sanctuary is still a pilgrimage site by the inhabitants of Alassio and the centers of the surrounding valleys of Merula, and the Lerrone dell'Arroscia