The Sacro Monte di Crea crowns one of the highest hills in lower Monferrato, an oak-and-chestnut nature park topped by a sanctuary and twenty-three chapels strung along a steep pilgrimage route. The chapels were built between 1589 and the mid-eighteenth century by some of the best mannerist sculptors of Piedmont — Guglielmo Caccia ("Il Moncalvo") painted many of the frescoes — and they create one of the most extraordinary religious landscapes in Italy.
The final chapel, the Cappella del Paradiso, sits at the very summit and frames an enormous wheeling chorus of angels and saints, supposedly more than 300 figures. The walk up from the sanctuary takes about an hour, longer if you stop to look properly into each chapel. On clear days the panorama from the top runs from the Alps across the whole Monferrato hills.