Historical Notes

The Sacred Mount of Ossuccio is located on a site of ancient pagan worship where in the I century AD stood the temple of the goddess Ceres Eleusinian.
According to the legend, a deaf-mute girl shepherd regained her ability to speak after finding a statue of the Virgin Mary in a cave. Several attempts to transfer the statue to the Collegiate Church of Isola failed: the statue would simply return to the mountain where it was found and, consequently, a dedicated shrine was built there.  The first documented place of worship was an aedicule with a painted image of the Virgin Mary with Child and Saint Euphemia. An actual church was then built surrounding it and described for the first time by the bishop of the diocese in 1593. The fourteenth-century marble statue depicting the young deaf-mute shepherd was preserved on the high altar.
In 1644, after a pastoral visit in 1627, bishop Carafino mentioned for the first time the wish to build a series of chapels nearby, dedicated to the mysteries of the Rosary. [The project] was probably driven by the Franciscan custodians of the place who started a fundraising campaign pleading for donations from the nobles of the area and the local communities.  Timoteo Snider (1678), custodian, site manager and designer, played a critical role in the works for he was at the sanctuary for about forty years.  The architectural complex, completed in 1710, took as its main inspiration the Sacred Mount of Varese with its cobbled streets, simpler chapels - however similarly revolving around the mysteries of the Rosary - and the last stop (the fifteenth) at the church, featuring also the same plastic artists of the Silva family, hailing from Morbio Inferiore.