Madonna del Ghisallo
Hillside chapel and cycling museum where champions donate their winning bicycles as offerings.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Madonna del Ghisallo chapel above Lake Como follows a torch relay from Rome in October 1948 that turned a mountaintop shrine into cycling's patron site, after Pope Pius the Twelfth named its painted Madonna protector of cyclists. Soon after, champions including Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali and Eddy Merckx began giving away their winning bicycles rather than keeping them. For years the offerings simply piled up on the chapel floor, until a single missing saddle changed how they were kept.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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