The name is older than the river it carries: «Castellum Sancti Felicis» appears in a document of 927, while «sul Panaro» was added only after unification, to tell the town from the other San Felice in Italy — and the Panaro, in fact, does not even cross the municipal territory. The main monument is the Este fortress, built between 1332 and 1340 by order of Marquis Obizzo III d'Este and strengthened in the following century by the military architect Bartolino da Novara. The clock tower of 1594 was for centuries the only clock available to those who owned none.
On the twentieth and the twenty-ninth of May 2012 the two Emilian earthquakes struck hard right here: the clock tower, cracked by the first shock, came down entirely with the second; the main church was almost destroyed along with its bell tower; the fortress lost the roofs of its towers. Three people died under the roof of a workshop. The town's war memorial is a mausoleum holding eighty-six bodies of soldiers of the Great War, one of the largest in Italy outside a cemetery.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 24 October
On 24 October San Felice sul Panaro celebrates its patron Saint Felix of Thibiuca; the town has hosted the Fiera di settembre for centuries, which reached its 400th edition in 2013.
Cooked grape must and wine vinegar aged in wooden barrels: Aceto Balsamico di Modena has held Protected Geographical Indication status since 2009.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside San Felice sul Panaro, but an easy day trip away.
