The Sanctuary of Santa Cristina is a stone chapel or small church perched precariously atop a rocky crag, some 1300 meters high, overlooking the Val Grande National Park. It is within the territory of the comune of Cantoira in the Metropolitan City of Turin, Piedmont, northern Italy. The church is only accessible via an arduous trek up hundreds of hewn stairs.
The site had a votive pillar erected in 1440 and dedicated to Saint Christina of Bolsena. Tradition holds that a shepherd, accosted by wolves, was rescued after the apparition of the Saint dispersed the predators. The pillar is part of the choir at the right of the entrance. The mountain-top localization of the shrine has some similarities to the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.
The first chapel was erected by citizens of both the town of Ceres and Cantoira, and both disputed the site. The interior has some 15th-century frescoes.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.