Loretto (properly LORETO), a city of Italy, stands 3 miles from the Adriatic and 15 by rail SSE. from Ancona. It has a royal palace (designed by Bramante), and 4134 inhabitants; but is chiefly noticeable as the site of the sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin Mary called the Santa Casa, or Holy House, which is reputed to be the house in which the Virgin lived in Nazareth. It was miraculously translated, first, in 1291, to the neighbourhood of Fiume in Dalmatia, thence in 1294 to a wood near Recanati in Italy, and was finally transferred to its present site in 1295. The church of the Santa Casa stands near the centre of the town, before it a colossal bronze statue of Pope Sixtus V. Its great central door is surmounted by a splendid bronze statue of the Madonna; and in the interior are three bronze doors with bas-reliefs, representing the principal events of scriptural and ecclesiastical history. The Holy House itself is a single apartment of no great size, originally of rude material and construction, but now cased with white marble, and exquisitely sculptured, after Bramante's designs, by Sansovino, Bandinelli, and other artists. The subjects of the bas-reliefs are taken from the history of the Virgin Mary, with the exception of three on the eastern side, which are devoted to the legends of the Holy House itself. The image of the Virgin which it contains is traditionally believed to have been carved by
St Lnke. The rest of the interior of the church is rich with bas-reliefs, mosaics (by Domenichino and Guido Reni), frescoes, paintings, and carvings in bronze. This shrine is visited by about 50,000 pilgrims annually, though formerly the number averaged 200,000.