The Marian devotion known as the Visitation commemorates the visit of Our Lady to her cousin Elizabeth and dates back to the 13th century, largely due to the influence of St. Bonaventure and was officially established as a feast by Pope Urban VI in 1389. St. Bonaventure, a franciscan, a contemporary of St. Francis himself, a cardinal, theologian and doctor of the church, was an strong promoter of this Marian devotion which is rooted in the Gospel of Luke and from which episode we have, arguably, the most beautiful Marian prayer, the “Magnificat”.

Gharb was the second parish to be established outside the Citadel / Rabat on the island of Gozo, at the end of the seventeenth century and the original church was in an areas known as taz-Zejt beside the current village cemetary.
The current church was built in the mid-eighteenth century and its architecture is distinctly baroque. It became a collegiate church as early as the 1774, barely two decades years after the new church was built. the collegiate church also later became a Basilica.

Preoceeding behind the church, we exit the village of Gharb, traversing the bridge across the valley and ascend to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of ta’ Pinu where our pilgrimage ends.