Grotte di Castro. Sanctuary of Our Lady of Suffrage

The church of Our Lady of Suffrage was built in Grotte di Castro over a previous fourteenth century church.

It was designed in the seventeenth century by Gerolamo Rainaldi and completed in the eighteenth century on a design by Andrea Selvi with the construction of the oval dome.

The church is in the Baroque style and in the basement, which houses a Museum of Sacred Art, one can find traces of the previous building.

The church was decorated by Luigi Fontana between 1886 and 1888.

In it there is the polychrome wooden statue of the Virgin of the Suffrage of the seventeenth century, which is still highly venerated throughout the area.

Every ten years the statue is carried in procession through the streets of the town.

On the top of the entrance proch (bussola d’ingresso) is an organ built by Morettini in the nineteenth century.

Among the other works you admire a seventeenth-century altarpiece by Francesco Nasini representing a 'Madonna of the Rosary and the fifteen mysteries'.

Another one of the school of Reni representing 'Crucified Jesus, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Francis of Assisi'.