The Church Was Not Completed Until The Second Half Of
The Last Century, When The Cupola Was Finished Mainly Through The
Energy Of A Priest, Carlo Giuseppe Gastaldi Of Netro.
This poor
man came to his end in a rather singular way.
He was dozing for a
few minutes upon a scaffolding, and being awakened by a sudden
noise, he started up, lost his balance, and fell over on to the
pavement below. He died a few days later, on the 17th of October,
either 1787 or 1778, I cannot determine which, through a misprint
in Muratori's account.
The work was now virtually finished, and the buildings were much as
they are seen now, except that a third storey was added to the
hospice about the year 1840. It is in the hospice that the
apartments are in which visitors are lodged. I was shown all over
them, and found them not only comfortable but luxurious - decidedly
more so than those of Oropa; there was the same cleanliness
everywhere which I had noticed in the restaurant. As one stands at
the windows or on the balconies and looks down on to the tops of
the chestnuts, and over these to the plains, one feels almost as if
one could fly out of the window like a bird; for the slope of the
hills is so rapid that one has a sense of being already suspended
in mid-air.
I thought I observed a desire to attract English visitors in the
pictures which I saw in the bedrooms.
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