Pieve and Lourdes Cave

Route details Recommended period Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter Phone+39 333 2744781

Useful advice Travelling on foot

Chiampo is a small town in the province of Vicenza which in the last ten years has become famous for its intense religious Marian movement which has developed around the Pieve and Lourdes Cave. The Pieve was constructed around the year one thousand but the actual building dates back to 1962. All that remains of the old church is the statue of the "Madonna with Child" in painted marble from 1480, and the baroque altar from 1743 made by a Veneto artist.

However the focus of popular worship is the Lourdes Cave which is reached along a lovely path of cypress trees.

The cave, which attracts almost one million pilgrims every year, was built in 1935 by the Blessed Claudio Granzotto after the French original located in the Pyrenees. The statue of the Virgin stands in a niche and was sculpted by the Blessed himself. The nearby Via Crucis is also highly evocative, realised with life-size bronze statues, which are considered some of the most beautiful in the world for their expressivity and the forestenvirons against the backdrop of the hillside.

Behind the Cave you can visit the "P.Aurelio Menin" Museum which features many collections such as palaeontology, zoology, mineralogy and applied geology.


More than just faith

Behind the Grotto, a building houses the Museo 'P. Aurelio Menin’ where you can visit sections devoted to palaeontology, conchiliology, zoology, mineralogy, applied geology, a photographic herbarium, a plaster collection, musical instruments, ethnology and figurative arts.