At Half-Past Three A
Grand Procession Would Convey The Holy Image To A Pretty Temple
Which Had Been Erected In The Market-Place.
The image was then to
be crowned by the Patriarch, carried round the town in procession,
and returned to the church of S. Antonio.
At eight o'clock there
were to be fireworks near the port; a grand illumination of a
triumphal arch, an illumination of the sanctuary and chapels with
Bengal lights, and an artificial apparition of the Madonna
(Apparizione artificiale della Beata Vergine col Bambino) above the
church upon the Sacro Monte. Next day the Holy Image was to be
carried back from the church of S. Antonio to its normal resting-
place at the sanctuary. We wanted to see all this, but it was the
artificial apparition of the Madonna that most attracted us.
Locarno is, as every one knows, a beautiful town. Both the Hotel
Locarno and the Hotel della Corona are good, but the latter is, I
believe, the cheaper. At the castello there is a fresco of the
Madonna, ascribed, I should think rightly, to Bernardino Luini, and
at the cemetery outside the town there are some old frescoes of the
second half of the fifteenth century, in a ruinous state, but
interesting. If I remember rightly there are several dates on
them, averaging 1475-80. They might easily have been done by the
same man who did the frescoes at Mesocco, but I prefer these last.
The great feature, however, of Locarno is the Sacro Monte which
rises above it.
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