It is located at the top of Mount Ortobene. According to legend, one of the three Pirella brothers, Melchiorre, Giovanni Angelo and Pietro Paolo, priests born in Nuoro, returning from the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Monte Nero near Livorno, found himself in a storm and promised to build a church on the first peak of the island he saw if he was saved. As stated on the plaque above the entrance, the church was built in 1608, in just 30 days, and dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Nero. The small church is described by Grazia Deledda, in her autobiographical novel Cosima:
“Above the small town (Nuoro) that was already six hundred meters above sea level, on the top of the mountain above, among woods of holm oaks and granite rocks, not far from the property of Cosima’s family and where for the first time she had seen the distant sea stood a small church called precisely Madonna del Monte, on a raised clearing and fenced in with boulders. Small rooms were leaning against the church, under the same roof, and a kind of little porch opened in front of the two doors, one to the noon, the other to the west, with masonry seats around it. In the little rooms the faithful dwelt, during the time of the novena and the feast of the little Madonna.”
