A seventeenth-century sanctuary, emerging in the urban landscape, outside the center and the hills.
A church with a very particular history and shape, a sign of an unexpected vibrancy and richness of the seventeenth-century city and a testament to a collaboration between public and private actors that is difficult to replicate today.
Designed as a custodian of an image painted a few years ago on a pillar and considered miraculous, it is the result of donations that allowed its construction in two years, between 1639 and 1641, despite an initial collapse and a change of project and designer during the work.
Almost four centuries ago, an effort was made to create a landmark, that is, a sign that would make Este (and the church itself) recognizable for those coming from the west or south. The almost rotating volume, the paired bell towers, the lack of a main facade, the whiteness of the plaster: everything contributes to showcasing the building in the territory from every point of view.
In Este, the church was also known as "the Madonna of fuora", to indicate its location outside the walls. It is now evident how the city has grown distanced from the church, which has remained isolated and "circumnavigable" since its foundation.
The city has slowly grown towards the via Augustea, surrounding but keeping the church at a proper distance, which, since the beginning of the 1800s, had been identified as a backdrop for an intersection of roads, some historical and some newly drawn, such as the avenue that starts from the facade of the church towards the west.
The strong geometry of the fundamental design dominates both outside and inside. The perfect octagon, reminiscent of Renaissance baptisteries, is classically oriented inside and presents the main facade to the west, marked only by the beautiful portal.
To most Estensi, the church appears as an inaccessible monument on a traffic divide. For those coming from the city center, the peculiar geometries and proportions of the building are enhanced by the play of volumes of the apse body, almost Renaissance in its formal cleanliness.
The bell towers are the true distinctive sign of the church. Unique because they are octagonal, with an eastern-style spire, very slender compared to the octagon of the main body, already fairly elongated. The different proportions in height make one forget the similarities in plan with the Venetian Basilica della Salute, which Longhena was designing precisely during the construction years of this one. In both cases, an octagon with two bell towers beside the apse part, but with a completely different elevation development.
The interior is austere in architecture that replicates the geometric cleanliness of the octagon but is rich in valuable works: a cycle of large canvases by Antonio Zanchi, who in the early 1700s designed the entire iconographic apparatus of the church (in collaboration with Antonio Fumiani). Additionally, many ex-voto of the faithful graced by the miraculous Madonna are preserved separately.
