history

Where now the Sanctuary of the Afflicted Virgin Mary (Santuario della Beata Vergine Addolorata) in Rho is built, there was     a small chapel devoted to the Virgin Mary of the Snow  (Madonna della Neve). In this, there was a fresco showing the Piety, datable to the beginning of the 16th Century. 

On April 24th 1583 the Virgin that was represented in it was seen crying bloody tears by some common people from Rho.

After an accurate investigation the Archbishop Carlo Borromeo wanted the building of the Sanctuary to commemorate the miracle, as a strong and tangible mark in support of the Marian cult. The same archbishop personally laid the foundation stone of the basilica on March 6th 1584, eight months before his death, after having commissioned the project to the architect Pellegrino Tibaldi, right-hand man in the renewal of the ecclesiastical architecture of the diocese within the Counter-Reformation.
 
In 1586, in presence of the archbishop Gaspare Visconti and Federico Borromeo, the Sanctuary, still under construction, was already open to the cult, moving the fresco of the miracle on the high altar, where it still is.

The edifice slowly grew and was substantially built within the first quarter of 17th Century, apart the dome, the bell tower and the facade.
On April 4th 1755 the temple was consecrated by Cardinal Giuseppe Pozzobonelli to the Queen of the Martyrs.

On impulse of the archbishop, very tied to the Sanctuary, the architectural completion of the basilica was then started with the construction of the dome on project of Carlo Giuseppe Merlo, and of the bell tower planned by Giulio Galliori, both built in the second half of the 18th Century.

After the Napoleonic suppressions, in 1798 and 1810, during which providential figures were the marquises Maria Lelia Talenti from Fiorenza, widow Castelli, and her mother Maria Selvagina Doria, also the facade was ended on project of the architect Leopold Pollack.
 
The decoration of the side chapels started at the beginning of the 17th Century, payed by noble families from the suburb and by the vestrymen, among which the families Simonetta, Crivelli, Visconti and Turri, recognizables from the respective heraldic coats of arms and from some burials at the feet of the altars. The 17th Century has left in the Sanctuary splendid altarpieces and great cycles of frescos inserted in rich decorative sets with gilded plasters.

For the decorative completion of the basilica we must wait for the second half of the 19th Century, culminated with the 1895 solemn inauguration at the presence of Cardinal Andrea Ferrari.

With the new millennium important jobs of restauration and exploitation of the Sanctuary have been started, with the realization of a new lighting equipment (2003), the restauration of San Giuseppe’s chapel (2004), San Carlo’s chapel (2007) and of San Giorgio’s one (2010), in a general program of exploitation of the complex.