Pizzo - La Chiesetta di Piedigrotta

The suggestive interior presents a series of natural arches, small caves in place of chapels, some stalagmites that act as columns and other processed to become the sculptures. Poor lighting in through the openings and helps to make this unusual even more extraordinary environment. The construction of the small church is linked to a legend according to which, in the seventeenth century, a Neapolitan vessel, on board of which he was a painting of the Madonna, found himself in the middle of a storm and was thrown against the rocks. The captain turned prayers to the Virgin Mary in order to be saved, along with his sailors and once escaped the danger and came to the shore, they saw the picture of Madonna fully intact on the beach. In that place then they decided to build a church in honor of Our Lady and dug inside a rock, by placing inside the miraculous painting. At the end of the nineteenth century, Angelo Barone and his son Alfonso, two local artists, enlarged the small church and you carved into the rock of groups of sculptures to depict episodes from the Holy Scriptures. They are carved, among other things, the statue of St. George, Bernadette, Our Lady of Pompeii, a sculpture representing the nativity scene and numerous figures of angels.