Santuary of Masciaga
The Sanctuary of Masciaga or Sanctuary of Madonna del Lazzaretto is located in the hamlet of Masciaga to the northwest of the inhabited center of Bedizzole.
Santuary of Masciaga It is an eighteenth-century building built on a previous church dedicated to San Nicola di Bari, which is supposed of the fifteenth century and which had been restored in the second half of the sixteenth century with the offerings of the inhabitants, after the pastoral visit of the bishop Domenico Bollani in 1566.
In 1542 a certain Silvestro Benaglio had a Madonna and Child painted on a wall of the 15th century hospital in the locality of Bettoletto; with time the image becomes a destination for pilgrimages and even more after the epidemic of 1630, so much so that a small chapel is built in front of the part with the image, but frequently the offers are made to disappear then, the Vicinie, with resolution from the meetings of 1717 and 1722, decide to build a new building to safely host the sacred image, the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Lazzaretto. In 1741 the image was transported to the church of San Nicola, awaiting the construction of the new building, which took place between 1763 and 1773 under the supervision of Antonio Tagliani and on a possible project by the architect Antonio Spazzi. The façade of the Santuario della Masciaga is a double register, the lower one marked by six pilasters with the portal in the middle with curvilinear tympanum, the upper one with four pilasters in the center with a window with the same tympanum of the portal. Inside it has a single nave with three bays, the central and that of the presbytery surmounted by domes; the high altar in marble is of 1794 by Francesco Seneci di Rezzato and always rezzatese is Girolamo Merici who made the murmur structure that contains the sacred image of the Madonna; other paintings are a Saint Nicholas of Bari by Francesco Paglia of 1699, a Madonna with Child and Saints Francis of Assisi Pietro and Carlo Borromeo by Francesco Bernardi of 1691.