ABSTRACT
In the last decades of the fifteenth century, Franciscan friars decided to bring the Holy Land to Italy. 1 The Sacro Monte di Varallo (Holy Mountain of Varallo), located in the sub-Alpine region northwest of Milan, and the Nuova Gerusalemme di San Vivaldo (New Jerusalem of San Vivaldo), situated in a Tuscan forest near Montaione, provided the opportunity for pilgrims to enter into full-scale, immersive simulations, or simmings, of the sacred sites of the Holy Land without the cost, danger, or physical taxation of travel to the actual places. 2
