Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy

Scattered across the foothills and lakes of northern Italy, nine devotional complexes known as Sacri Monti stage the Christian story in architecture. Built for the most part in the late 1500s and the 1600s, each is a hillside sequence of chapels filled with life-size statues and frescoes, designed so pilgrims could walk through scenes of faith amid forests and mountain views. UNESCO inscribed the Sacred Mountains of Piedmont and Lombardy in 2003 for this rare fusion of art, belief and landscape.