Loreto

The Holy House of Loreto is a well-known Catholic pilgrimage place in Italy near Ancona.

The Santa Casa di Loreto has been a destination of pilgrimages since at least the 15th century. It is said to be the house in which the Holy Family lived in Nazareth, brought to Colli del Lauri in 1294 by angels, around which a basilica has been built. It is a master work of several prominent architects and artists. It is associated particularly with the Virgin Mary, being believed by the faithful to be the place in which she was born, received the Annunciation, and conceived Jesus. It is this House that gave birth to the name Our Lady of Loreto which is applied to the Virgin.

The interior is only about 9.5 x 4 meters.

Tradition gives the house a long travel history. It is claimed that angels carried ("translated") the House from Palestine to Tersato in Illyria in 1291, and again transported it to the area of Recanati in Ancona in 1294, and a third time, that same year, to its current location. The House can be seen in some religious illustrations being borne by an angelic host.

Arguing against this tradition are the facts that there are no records of the House having been known in the Holy Land prior to its existence in Loreto, and that there are records of the house in the current location prior to its supposed translation by angels.

A similar tradtion records the erection, by angels, of a chapel at Walsingham which exactly reproduced the Holy House of Nazareth.

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The shrine itself, in which some of the great Italian architects and sculptors of the 16th century collaborated.