Patron saint festival In 298 days
Saint Francis of Paola and Palazzo Sanseverino
📅 Every year, on the second Sunday of August
Marcellinara celebrates Saint Francis of Paola on the second Sunday of August, next to Palazzo Sanseverino.
Marcellinara stands almost exactly in the middle of the isthmus of Catanzaro, the point where the Italian peninsula grows narrowest and the two seas, the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian, come close enough to face each other. Below the village opens the saddle of Marcellinara, also called Garrupa: it is the deepest depression in the whole Calabrian Apennine, and that is why everything passes through here. At the southern entrance of the village a green area is dedicated to the isthmus itself, the Giardino dell'Istmo.
That this is a forced passage is confirmed by the roads: the village lies on the state road of the Calabrias, which follows the line of the ancient consular via Popilia, and it is served by the railway linking Lamezia Terme to Catanzaro Lido, that is, crossing the peninsula from sea to sea. Its feudal history is bound to the Sanseverino, who in 1447 received Marcellinara in fief from Alfonso of Aragon. The municipal coat of arms carries a flaming heart pierced by arrows, and it is no recent invention: it repeats an old stamp already in use in the fifteenth century, although the official grant came only in 2017.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Marcellinara 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Marcellinara
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Marcellinara, but an easy day trip away.
Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola 📍 Carpi · 11 km Jesuit church of 1670-1682 in Carpi, on a Greek-cross plan, with scagliola altars and the diocesan museum. Basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta 📍 Carpi · 11 km Carpi cathedral begun in 1514 to Peruzzi's design, reopened in 2017 after the 2012 earthquake. Chiesa di Santa Maria in Castello 📍 Carpi · 12 km Romanesque pieve of 1184, the oldest church in Carpi, with a Peruzzi façade and twelfth-century frescoes. Chiesa di San Bernardino da Siena 📍 Carpi · 12 km Patron church of Carpi, begun in 1604, with the reliquary bust of Saint Bernardino of Siena.