Fabio Da Roit
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Beautiful square with the 1614 fountain and the basilica which houses what is believed to be the house of Saint Mary, mother of Jesus, in Nazareth.
Masses are held several times a day; a good time for a tourist visit might be between 12:30 and 5:00 PM.
Parking lots outside the walls are charged from 6:00 am to 9:00 pm € 1.40/hour € 10 all day, a short distance away there are also large parking lots both free and charged. Toilets € 0.50 at the small gardens behind the square.
If you limit yourself to this and to walking along the main street with the businesses, the visit can take an hour and a half.
There is also more to see and the visit can take up the whole day.
The Museo Pontificio Della Santa Casa € 8 and the patrol walkways € 5 these only with guided tour ( 5 per day the first at 10) their cumulative ticket € 10.
"Porta della Marina" from 1534, near has the panoramic terrace, the small park of remembrance, the“holy staircase” of 400 steps and the Polish war cemetery.
Free admission for the permanent mechanical nativity scene 9 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2:30-7:30 p.m. and the small air force museum from July to September daily 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m., an airplane of the “Frecce Tricolori,” is exhibited outside the “round tower” .
The Roman Gate of 1590, near the civic tower of the 17th, and of course you can also walk all the way around the defensive walls.
According to tradition, in 1291, angels transported three walls of Our Lady's house from the cave in Nazareth, to which it was connected by the fourth wall, to the town of Rijeka in Croatia. They then moved it to the vicinity of Ancona. After 9 months, another transfer took place, this time to Porto Recanati on the property of a noblewoman named “Loreta”. After her name, the statue on display in the house was called “Madonna di Loreta” or “Vergine Lauretana”, but it burned down in a fire in 1921 and the statue on display today is a copy from 1922.
Again the angels, after 8 months, moved the house to another private property, but in 1294 they lifted it into the air again, finally depositing it on the top of a hill, and the shrine and city of Loreto was founded around it.
According to another, more historical version, it was the Crusaders, nearing defeat in the Last Crusade, who dismantled the house. The transport to Italy from Palestine was carried out by the "Angeli" family, a real Italian surname, and over the years this gave rise to a misunderstanding that confused them with heavenly angels.
Having become a pilgrimage destination in 1468, work began on the construction of the basilica.
In the 16th century Donato Bramante created the fine marble facing that covers the outer walls of the “Holy House".
The city's mighty city walls were built between 1518 and 1522 to resist possible attacks by the Turks who landed on the coasts plundering the villages, an earlier wall from 1315 defended pilgrims and their donations from bandits.
The basilica''s exterior was completed in 1587 while work on the interior decorations ended a few years later.
