Loreto basilica, also known as the Santa Casa - Holy House - is one of the main centers of pilgrimage for the Christian world, is located near the city of Ancona.

There is a legend that in the 4th century, the Empress Helena during their walking on holy places has found the same house where the Virgin Mary grew up and in which there was a miracle of the Annunciation. Elena ordered to build a church over the house, but in the 13th century, during the next Crusade, this church was destroyed, and the house of the Virgin Mary was in danger. Mysteriously - according to legend, with the help of the angels - "the holy house" was transferred to Dalmatia in the vicinity of the city of Rijeka. They say that the Virgin Mary herself explained the origin of the local bishop of the building. Historians believe that it was transferred to Rijeka on the orders of a despot Nikephoros I.

No less mysterious and the fate of the Holy House - in the 13th century, it miraculously appeared in the town of Loreto, near Ancona, where he built a basilica around. Almost immediately after this tiny building just 8 long, 5 meters wide and 3 meters 8 was one of the main shrines of Christian Europe. It is known that it is visited by Rene Descartes and the Pope Benedict XIV, and replicas of the Holy House were built in Prague and Warsaw. The building has a door on the north side and a window on the West, and kept in a niche inside the icon of the Virgin Mary with Child, made from Lebanese cedar and richly decorated with precious stones.

The current building of the Basilica of Loreto in the late Gothic style was built after 1507, the year the Pope confirmed the authenticity of the Holy House by a special bull. Temple worked on a project by Giuliano da Maiano, Giuliano da Sangallo and Bramante Danto, and the Baroque bell tower - is the creation of Vanvitelli. The interior of the basilica is decorated with priceless frescoes by Signorelli and Melotstso and mosaics Domenichino and Guido Reni.

In front of the church stands a huge statue of Pope Sixtus V, and the above the main doorway stands a bronze statue of the Virgin Mary with Child. Sami doors were made in the late 16th century by Girolamo Lombardo, his sons and disciples, among whom was Tiburtsio Verdzhelli - author font basilica.