Chiesa di San Martino

This guide to Chiesa di San Martino above Griante, on Lake Como, follows a legend the shepherds here still swear by: during the plague years of 1627 to 1630, a young shepherdess chasing her flock found a gilded fifteenth-century statue of the Madonna and Child inside a cave on this mountainside. Villagers carried the statue down to the valley church, relieved to have it safe, but it would not stay there. You'll hear what the statue did next, and about the people who rebuilt this sanctuary by hand in the 1970s after decades of neglect and theft. Stand at the ledge outside and look for the three arms of Lake Como spreading below.