Un prodigio “sfortunato”? Valori e ambizioni disattese di un luogo “miracolato”: il Santuario di Vicoforte (Mondovì)

This paper proposes some considerations about the plurality of values and meanings that influence the success or the failures of a place, made sacred by a religious event and by an ambitious architectural building programme. In Vico, near Mondovì, a miracle occurred in 1592 at a pillar voted to Mary. The social impact of this miracle radically changed the fate of the place, until then simply considered an anonymous and ordinary rural site. A widespread cult of devotion was triggered by the miracle, a religious process shared by both the popular and ruling classes. The royal court became involved in the devotional phenomena and the Duke Carlo Emanuele I decided that the building which was in construction around the pillar was to become the mausoleum of the House of Savoy, enriching and enhancing by this choice the sacral and political geographical configuration of the Duchy. However, the site of the miracle was not technically able to support the mass and the vastness of the sanctuary building due to a layer of clay in the soil that compromised the structure from the first years of the construction. For this reason, the church remained incomplete until the middle of the 17th century, and its whole history was blighted by structural deficiencies. Nowadays, efforts to protect the structure of the dome of the church (the world’s largest oval dome) still require several innovative approaches in structural engineering. The cultural relevance of the sanctuary seems to dwell in the plurality of values and cultural interest, which concern it. This plurality is the reason for the complex cultural heritagization process that has characterized the sanctuary for more than four centuries.