The Sanctuary of Maria Santissima di Canneto is located in the heart of the National Park of Abruzzo, at the foot of the Meta mountains where the waters of Melfa, in the homonymous valley, flow out. It can be reached from Settefrati through a panoramic road, which from the Rocca Pass descends to the wide square of the Sanctuary in a fantastic naturalistic scenery between dizzying peaks and woods.
The remains of a temple dedicated to a female deity of the 4th century B.C., found in 1958 during the work to capture the waters of the Melfa spring (Capodacqua) prove the pre-existence in the area of a pagan cult tributes to the goddess Mefiti, an Italic deity linked to the waters and invoked for the fertility of the fields and female fertility. Fragments of pottery, female clay statuettes, bronze coins from the 4th, 2nd and 1st centuries B.C., now on display in a special notice board in the Shrine’s memorial room, have been found there. The Christian Sanctuary, according to tradition, originated from an apparition of Our Lady to a shepherdess who asked her to build a church, then left her statue on the site of the vision and made a spring spring spring from a rock in which she dispersed a minute gold dust. The first document that makes explicit mention of a church dedicated to Our Lady of Canneto dates back to the year 819 (Bull of Pope Paschal I), and in a rescript of Pope Nicholas IV of 1288 there are testimonies of the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary; in this same period are found in the church for the first time a college of clerics assigned to the service of the temple and the religious assistance of devotees who flocked here frequently.
The Madonna del Canneto is celebrated on the 22nd of August but with celebrations starting on the 18th of August, when a reproduction of the statue is taken in procession from Settefrati to the sanctuary, and then returned on the 22nd.
