Santa Maria della Croce, Crema

The church was built in the Lombard Renaissance style about one and a half mile from the city center, outside the medieval walls, on the road to Bergamo where a Marian apparition may have affected Caterina degli Uberti, a woman from Cremona.

Legend holds that on 13 April 1490, after she was fatally wounded by her husband in a wooded area close to the town, and wishing to die in the Grace of God, she implored the help of the Virgin Mary who, it is said, ferried her to a nearby farmhouse.

However prodigious phenomena continued to happen time and again transforming the site into a holy place to such an extent that the local authorities decided to build a sanctuary.

In recent years, the sanctuary was entrusted to the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, a religious community of men who live a contemplative and apostolic life and currently serve also in Milan, Rome, and Sicily.

Battagio designed a Greek cross plan, with a c. 35 m-tall central structure (circular externally, octagonal internally),[3] to which four smaller units, with a height of some 15 m, are joined.

Other artists active in the interior paintings and frescoes, include Benedetto Rusconi, Giovanni Battista Grandi, Aurelio Gatti, Angelo Bacchetta and the Torricelli brothers from Lugano.