There’s a stone inside the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Piano in Bianzone that, for generations, has kept its surface always damp. They used to call it “the stone that sweats”. In the hardest times—famine, wars, sickness—the people of the village (and, it seems, people from nearby places too) would go and touch it.
Today, that stone sits much higher than the floor, and reaching it means using a small set of steps. Floods have changed the level of the ground, and restorations have brought to light parts of the church that had been buried for decades. And the stone, they say, no longer sweats.
No written document tells this story. It’s a tradition passed down by word of mouth, confirmed by a local historian. But to understand how a single stone could become a symbol of devotion for an entire village, you first need to know the church that keeps it safe. And that’s where the story really starts to run on.
A church older than it looks
The sanctuary we see today didn’t simply spring up from nothing in the seventeenth century. Before the big expansion, there was already a church with Romanesque features, and a bell tower with paired openings and a pyramidal spire that echoes Romanesque-Lombard style.
How old it really is, nobody can say for sure: it could date back to the twelfth century, though it’s also possible it’s a later work—even from the early sixteenth century. Visits by the bishops between 1614 and 1674 describe a church that grows slowly: first a roof with trusses and a handful of altars, then an iron gate and a fine icon, and finally, on the eve of the major event that was about to arrive, a pulpit, a confessional, furnishings and vestments. The bishops note that alms are on the rise.
There’s also a definite date carved into the stone of remembrance: in 1563, someone painted a fresco, which was later brought back to the surface during restorations and attributed to Cipriano Valorsa. It isn’t the church’s foundation. But even now, it’s the most solid material reference we have.
The night of 26 March 1675
According to an old account, that night an inhabitant of Bianzone, Battista de’ Flagelli, experiences something extraordinary. He says that his home fills with a light more intense than the sun, and that he hears the voice of the Virgin.
The message, he says, asks that the shrine of the Madonna del Piano be made more worthy, with a new altar. Battista claims he’s been healed from a serious illness. Afraid he might not be believed, he waits eleven days before telling everything to the parish priest. In the meantime, he starts bringing stones and promises two lots of wine for the work.
The parish priest doesn’t accept the story as it stands. He questions Battista, involves the community council, and leaves the final judgement to the senior ecclesiastical authorities. The episode reaches us only thanks to a manuscript found by chance in a house in Bianzone in 1911.
The building work that joined half the valley
After 1675, they don’t build a brand-new church; they expand the one that’s already there.
The real work starts on 11 June 1683, led by two master builders: Stefano Panizza from Ponte for the building side, and Nicolò Tamagnino from Bormio for the stone. Precisely the green stone: an old payment record mentions 248 arms’ worth of dressed stone, used for the eight pilasters on the façade. The same stone—and the same family of stone masons from Bormio—some decades later will also work on the portal of the Santa Casa in Tresivio.
The site truly brings together half the valley: cash donations and in-kind contributions come from Boalzo, Teglio, Tresenda, Carona, Aprica, Tirano, Chiuro, Ponte, Castello dell’Acqua and Brusio. By September 1684, they’re working with up to 103 people, many of them for free.
The façade we see today shows three different dates, a sign of just how long the building work went on: 1746 on the portal, 1754 on the marble flooring, and 1766 on a pilaster along the façade. There’s also an unproven but intriguing theory: the façade looks very much like that of Santa Teresa in Naples. That local craftsmen might have seen models from Naples remains only a hypothesis.
A little mystery under the dome
The presbytery, with its octagonal dome frescoed with the Assumption of Mary, prophets and apostles, is one of the sanctuary’s most precious parts. But who painted it remains an open mystery.
One source reads an incomplete name: “Alujsius Riccardus”. The official entry from Lombardia Beni Culturali, however, lists Giovanni Battista Muttoni. Two sources, two different names. Until an art historian settles the doubt, it’s best not to guess.
Thieves, bells, and a half-sized organ
The old high altar, wooden and from the eighteenth century, is gone. What remains is an elegant marble niche that the thieves couldn’t carry away.
Because there have been quite a few thieves here. In 1961, the historical statue of the Madonna—dating from the seventeenth century—disappears and will never be found again. The statue we see today is a copy, commissioned in 1963 from a woodcarver in Ortisei.
The bells have their own story. The largest, 476 kilos, is melted down in 1609 and is known as “the storm bell”. The two smaller ones are cast in 1823 in Tirano and placed on the bell tower in 1828.
The organ, by Giovanni Battista Reina and his son Giuseppe, dates from 1752–1753. After the 1870 flood, tradition says that part of the pipes was taken apart and reassembled in the organ of the parish church of Santa Eufemia in Teglio. Not the whole organ—only part of it. In 1978, at the sanctuary, the wind chest and the soundboard, and three wooden pipes, were still recognisable.
Water, war, and twenty years of silence
On the evening of 14 August 1870, on the eve of the Assumption, a violent storm sends the Valle torrent into flood. Water, mud and boulders batter the doors and sweep into the interior. The statue of the Madonna, displayed for the festival, is found intact. The church remains unusable for four years.
But it isn’t over. New floods arrive in 1886 and again in 1894. In 1927, the main road is widened and placed right up against the building: heavy traffic transmits vibrations, and new cracks appear.
Then came the war. During the First World War, the church is used as a store for ammunition and gunpowder. On the portal, for years, the words “Smoking prohibited” remain legible. Inside a church.
After 1945, silence. In 1954 a local newspaper reports broken roofs, water ingress, and windows without glass. From 1961 onwards, thefts begin, one after another: paintings, furnishings, parts of the organ, the pulpit, the balustrades. At the start of the 1970s, the interior is almost destroyed.
Only in the 1980s, when the road is finally moved down to the valley and a major recovery is carried out—wanted by the parish priest, Don Virginio Zubiani, together with the community—the sanctuary comes back to life. It reopens in solemn fashion on 22 September 1985.
And the stone?
Today, the stone no longer sweats. It’s stayed there, higher than before, a silent witness to three hundred years of floods, wars, thefts and restorations. Perhaps it stopped sweating because it had already seen enough.
