Set within a natural cave at the entrance to the Frasassi cave system, near the town of Genga in the Marche region of central Italy, stands a small neoclassical chapel known as the Tempio del Valadier. The structure occupies a ledge inside the limestone gorge of the Gola di Frasassi, in the province of Ancona, and forms part of a religious complex that has been in use for roughly a thousand years.
The Tempio del Valadier stands within a few dozen metres of a much earlier sanctuary, Santa Maria infra Saxa - Latin for "Saint Mary among the rocks" - which is cited in documents dating to 1029. That earlier structure is a plain stone building erected by Benedictine monks to house a burned image of the Madonna.
