Our Lady of Sorrows Church

In Cavalese, next to the Church of St. Maria Assunta, there is the Church consecrated to Our Lady of Sorrows of Fiemme. It was built in 1829 commissioned and sponsored by the Magnifica Comunità di Fiemme and the generous donation by father Antonio Longo, a painter from Varena. The church is built in a neoclassical style and on its walls there are frescoes of the Lady of Sorrows and of some scenes of Jesus’s life, like Christ on the Cross and The Last Supper. Furthermore, in the church there is a “Pietà” dating back to 1400: it was seriously damaged in 1978 but restored two years later.

The devotion of Val di Fiemme to the Lady of Sorrows is ancient and deep: as a matter of fact, the population always prayed her in the moments of serious need. This devotion gave birth to the tradition of “levata”: on 24th June 1944 the Magnifica Comunità asked the people of Val di Fiemme to make a solemn vow to the Lady of Sorrows, asking her to spare the valley from the bombings. With this solemn vow, whose text can be seen inside the church, the population committed to carry out the “levata”: that is, carrying the statue of the Lady of Sorrows in a procession through the streets of Cavalese every 25 years, renewing the solemn vow. Afterwards, the valley has always fulfilled this commitment, but in a less rigid way and more or less every 10 years. The last “levata” took place in September 2016. In addition to that, every year, the third Sunday of September is devoted to the celebration of the Church.