Parish Church of St. Giovanni Battista

This parish church with its thousand-year history is the oldest sacred building in the Vestino Valley.

To reach the parish church, it was necessary to drive along the road “of the dead”, so called because the only cemetery in the valley stood beside the building. The interior housed several side chapels, of which the one in which baptisms took place was dedicated to St John the Baptist. This is probably the reason for the change of name that took place with the reconstruction in the 1500s; previously it was the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta.

It was here that the “Celebrationl of Forgiveness”, held on the third Sunday in August, originated: in 1166 Pope Alexander III, pursued by Frederick Barbarossa, arrived in Val Vestino and celebrated mass during which he granted the “indulgence of forgiveness”, an extremely rare event at the time.The statue is carried on the shoulders.