The nine Sac­ri Mon­ti (Sacred Moun­tains) of north­ern Italy are groups of chapels and oth­er archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures cre­at­ed in the late 16th and 17th cen­turies and ded­i­cat­ed to dif­fer­ent aspects of the Chris­t­ian faith. In addi­tion to their sym­bol­ic spir­i­tu­al mean­ing, they are of great beau­ty by virtue of the skill with which they have been inte­grat­ed into the sur­round­ing nat­ur­al land­scape of hills, forests and lakes. They also house much impor­tant artis­tic mate­r­i­al in the form of wall paint­ings and stat­u­ary.