Loreto is a main religious travel destination for thousands of pilgrims during their vacations to Italy.
Once inside though, you’ll realize that is not the church that you came to visit. The real shrine is the tiny room you find behind the main altar. It is said to be Mary’s house brought to Loreto by the Angels. A more modern version says it was carried from the Holy Land by the wealthy family Angeli. Thinking about the difficulty and length of the travel it actually seems a miracle that they could make it. Inside the chamber another surprise awaits you. It’s a most unusual statue of a Madonna. The small Madonna is totally black and decorated in gold in the most singular fashion. It is difficult to trace the reason of this unusual iconography, but many statues around the Marche region replicate it. Probably the original wooden statue became black for centuries of smoke from candles and oil lamps, then the new statues were painted to imitate the original icon.
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