Few cities give their name to an art across half of Europe: «faïence» in French, «faience» in English — majolica is called that because of Faenza, which has worked it since the Middle Ages and has never stopped. The MIC, the International Museum of Ceramics founded in 1908, is the largest of its kind in the world: from Picasso and Chagall to Hispano-Moresque bottles; dozens of workshops in town keep the craft going at the wheel. Since October 2025 it has also been a UNESCO creative city for crafts and folk art.
But Faenza is not only ceramics: between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was a reference point for European neoclassicism, and Palazzo Milzetti, today a national museum, is its highest example. Piazza del Popolo with its double loggias and the Palio del Niballo, the June joust, complete a lively, practical Romagna town, which answered the recent floods the way Romagna knows how: by rolling up its sleeves.
Chiesa dei Servi · Chiesa di San Bartolomeo · Chiesa di Sant'Umiltà and 3 more
Tagliatelle al Ragù
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Next up: The Blessed Virgin of Grace, patron crowned during the 1631 plague, Saturday 8 May
Nearest airport: Bologna Marconi, 55 km away
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📅 Every year, on the Saturday before the second Sunday of May; Saint Peter Damian, secondary patron, is celebrated on 21 February
Faenza celebrates the Blessed Virgin of Grace on the Saturday before the second Sunday of May; her image was crowned in 1631, during a fresh outbreak of plague, while the secondary patron Saint Peter Damian is remembered on 21 February.
Chiesa dei Servi Eighteenth-century Servite church, closed since the post-war years, with Soratini's two-order brick façade. Chiesa di San Bartolomeo Thirteenth-century Romanesque church, rebuilt in 1209, today the Shrine of the Fallen of all wars. Chiesa di Sant'Umiltà Church rebuilt in 1741, Faenza's most important late Baroque example, with gilded stuccoes and a Greek cross p Chiesa di Santa Maria ad Nives Old church outside the gate, perhaps Faenza's first cathedral, with African breccia columns and an octagonal b Museo Nazionale dell'età neoclassica in Romagna Neoclassical house museum in Faenza, frescoed by Felice Giani between 1802 and 1805 for Count Francesco Milzet 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 Faenza, but an easy day trip away.
