Messaging Outside The Church

In front of the Church of the Virgin of the Consolation is a small piazza with the famous Caffè Al Bicerin which serves the delicious local speciality beverage : Bicerin and some other restaurants.

A woman stepped away from the crowd to read messages in private, borrowing the light from the entrance of the church. Perhaps it was a message from God?

Location :  Piazza Della Consolata

Santuario della Consolata

The Santuario della Consolata or, in its full name, the Church of the Virgin of the Consolation is a prominent Marian sanctuary and minor basilica in central Turin, Piedmont, Italy. Colloquially, the sanctuary is known as La Consla. It is located on the intersection of Via Consolata and Via Carlo Ignazio Giulio. 

The church was originally built in the style of a basilica. Over the years the church and the icon were rebuilt and restored by various orders of monks. In 1448 the prior of Sant'Andrea expanded the church building one bay to the west. With the increased popularity of devotion to Our Lady of Consolation, the church changed from a parish to a shrine.

The interior has a jubilantly polychrome rococo decoration with colored marbles and solomonic columns. The Juvarra altar has two marble angels in adoration by Carlo Antonio Tantardini. The interior has a sculpture of two praying queens by Vincenzo Vela. Outside the church is a statue of a virgin and child on a column.
The church serves as a burial place for a number of saints affiliated with Turin: Giuseppe Cafasso and Leonardo Murialdo, as well as the Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, rector (1880-1926) and founder of the Mission Institute of the Consolata. Every June 20, a procession of the icon of the Virgin takes place in the streets of the city.

The church is an eclectic collection of architecture, and includes portions of an ancient Roman wall, a Romanesque bell-tower, a baroque set of domes, almost Byzantine, sheltering a gothic icon, with two porticos, one of which has Neoclassic severity. The clashing of Guarini's and Juvarra's often mathematical architecture with the highly decorated interior, stubbornly magnetic to a ritualistic popular piousness, leads to a modern synthesis with immanent overtones.

( Quoted from :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santuario_della_Consolata )


Location : Santuario della Consolata

Conversation

Guido and Max in front of the info board having a conversation about the bell tower of the Consolata church...

Consolata Church And Its Tower

The Santuario della Consolata at piazza Della Consolata.

 The Consolata standing side by side with its bell tower....

The bell tower was built in the eleventh century, the completion of the church of Sant'Andrea, the bell tower is the work of monaco Bruningo, and only evidence of the previous Romanesque church which was built on the current sanctuary is in fact due to this fact, it  appears to be disconnected from the design of  the main body of the baroque basilica.

Buona Pasqua, Happy Easter

Buona Pasqua, happy Easter!

Statue of Gesus in the Santuario della Consolata