Above the city of Maratea, on top of Monte San Biagio, reigns the statue of the Redeemer, or more commonly the Christ of Maratea.

Built to replace the memorial cross commemorating the attack suffered by the ancient fortified citadel in 1806, Christ the Redeemer is the work of the Biella-based Stefano Rivetti from Val Cervo, who arrived in Basilicata in 1953 to start up industrial activities.

Since 1957 Rivetti had entrusted the project to the artist Bruno Innocenti, a professor at the Florence State Institute of Art. The first sketches of the statue date back to 1960 and in 1964 the study and the structural project of the structure was entrusted to Ing. Luigi Musumeci.

Musumeci began the construction of the iron and concrete reinforcement, fixed to the  foundations carved into the rock of the mountain with the use of more than 14 tons of iron that became the backbone of the work and in September of the same year he began the release of the conglomerate marble and concrete that would have made up the body of the statue.

Between the end of 1964 and the first months of 1965, Bruno Innocenti realized the chiselling of the entire surface of the sculpture.

The Redeemer of Maratea is the highest statue of Christ in Europe and it’s placed at the third place in the world, with its 21 meters of height, (after the one in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with its 38 meters and the one in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with its 33 meters).

The monument stretches out towards the sea, overhanging for several hundred meters overlooking the port of Maratea and giving visitors one of the most striking views of the area.

 

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