Sanctuary of the Madonna del Sasso

The sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie is located in the town of Pontassieve and is also called the Madonna del Sasso in reference to a series of miraculous apparitions of the Virgin occurred in 1484. The building was built in 1490 in place of an oratory of medieval origin. The present church, much larger, then altered in the following centuries, consists of a lower oratory and a superior one, the latter preceded by a portico on two sides dating back to the seventeenth century. In the lower oratory of modern work, there is a table of the first fifteenth century with the Madonna and Child and Saints John the Baptist and Leonardo, a work of the early fifteenth century attributed to Giovanni Benintendi known as Ceraiolo. In the upper oratory, whose walls are decorated with neoclassical frescoes, are: on the right Transit of San Giuseppe, Florentine school canvas of the early eighteenth century, in the choir of the organ Crucifixion dated 1600 by Benedetto Veli and on the left a painted with the Madonna, angels and saints by Francesco Curradi.