Tempio neoclassico detto del Valadier

Interesting facts

While the temple was being built, workers dug up ovens, two grain pits, coins and human bones, traces of the cave's long use as a refuge.

The temple was popularly called the Refuge of Sinners, a sanctuary meant for penitents seeking forgiveness.

The white travertine was cut from a quarry directly above the cave, so the building is made of the same mountain that shelters it.

Pope Leo XII, who commissioned the temple in his native valley, died in 1829, only a year after it was completed.

The hermitage's wooden statue of the Madonna survived attempted thefts but was burned in a fire in the 1940s and replaced by a stone copy.

Before it housed enclosed Benedictine nuns, the hermitage is recorded as an oratory, partly built into and partly carved from the cave wall.

Since 1981 the Frasassi gorge has staged a living nativity with about 300 participants spread over some 30,000 square metres.

The path climbing to the cave is lined with fourteen Stations of the Cross, turning the short ascent into a pilgrim's Way of the Cross.

Why it is worth it

Set deep inside the mouth of a cave in the limestone hills of the Marche, a small white temple stands as if placed there by hand: a neoclassical octagon of pale travertine under a grey lead-covered dome, sheltered by an overhanging roof of raw rock. The contrast between the cool geometry of the building and the rough cavern around it gives the place, popularly known as the Temple of Valadier, an air of a stage set, yet it was built as a working sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin.

The church owes its existence to a local son who became pope. Annibale della Genga, born in the castle of Genga, began the commission as a cardinal around 1817 and saw it completed by 1828, when he reigned as Pope Leo XII. Tradition credits the design to Giuseppe Valadier, the leading neoclassical architect of papal Rome, and the building still carries his name. More recent archival research, however, has attributed the project to a succession of architects from the region, Tommaso Zappati, Pietro Ghinelli, known for the Teatro delle Muse in Ancona, and Carlo Donati. The travertine blocks were quarried locally, in the area of the Frasassi caves. Inside, a marble Madonna and Child from the workshop of Antonio Canova was once venerated; the original is now kept in the museum of art and history in Genga, and a copy has taken its place in the temple.

The temple shares its cavern with a far older retreat, the hermitage of Santa Maria Infra Saxa, "Saint Mary among the rocks", built into and partly carved out of the cave wall. Written records of it go back to 1029, when it housed an enclosed community of Benedictine nuns, and local tradition holds that the people of the valley once took refuge in these caves from invaders. The surrounding landscape is the Gola della Rossa and Frasassi regional nature park, a country of limestone gorges and karst, and the same hills hide the vast Frasassi cave system, whose first entrance was found by a farmer in 1948, with further caves discovered over the following decades.

Getting there

The temple lies in the municipality of Genga, in the province of Ancona, about 8 km from Fabriano. Genga–San Vittore Terme station on the Rome–Ancona railway is nearby. The nearest airport is Marche Airport (AOI) near Ancona, about 41 km away.

Tempio neoclassico detto del Valadier

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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