You just need to follow the tree-lined road from Galliate’s centre and you will soon encounter San Pietro church in Vulpiate, also known as Varallino Sanctuary due to its resemblance with the famous Sacro Monte (Holy Mount) in Varallo Sesia.
It was born as a small country-church, but during the 1500’s it became very popular among the faithful because of an image, believed to be miraculous, depicting Mary handing a pear to the Child.
According to tradition, a noblewoman from Rome, after having been freed from demonic possession, financed the works of enlarging the church, that otherwise would have been completed at the end of the XIV century.
The edifice consists in a central structure while, the big elliptic room is surrounded by ten lateral chapels and a large presbytery, where the Mysteries of Salvation are kept.
Both the structure and the decorations were inspired from the Roman Baptistery of Novara, which between the XVII and XVIII century, was completely decorated with frescoes.
Many artists contributed to paint the Sanctuary, among them appear two important names: Lorenzo Peracino from Valsesia, who painted the frescoes and Dionigi Bussola (roman) who did the sculptures. Peracino begun to work in 1748, depicting the Grievous Misteries, the Gaudiosi Misteries and “colouring all the statues”, that until then had been left in their natural colour. The works were completed in 1752, but a few years later the Crucifixion Chapel was built, completed in 1762 when the Glorious Misteries of the presbytery and the restoring of the Virgin Mary painting were completed.
Between 1780 and 1781, Peracino, helped by his son Giovanni Battista, also depicted the decorations of the Sacristy in Varallino. But his most important creation is the Virgin’s Coronation and Paradise, that decorates the Sanctuary’s central dome (1765- 1767).
The whole construction site was completed in 1841/1842 with the neoclassical statues created by Giuseppe Argenti.