Patron saint festival
Feast of Saint Nilus
📅 Every year, on 26 September
On 26 September Grottaferrata celebrates Saint Nilus, who founded the Abbey of Santa Maria in 1004, still led today by Basilian monks according to the Greek-Byzantine rite.
© Edoardo Scialis · CC BY-SA 4.0edited by BigItalia · Request removal
The abbey of Grottaferrata is one of a kind: founded in 1004 by Saint Nilus of Rossano, it is Italy's last Italo-Greek monastery, where Basilian monks still celebrate the Byzantine rite in a church glittering with mosaics and icons, inside walls fortified by Sangallo for Pope Julius II. Its ancient-book restoration workshop has saved codices from half the world, including volumes damaged in Florence's 1966 flood.
Around the monastery lives a town of 19,156 on the Alban Hills, twenty kilometres from Rome, among Tusculan villas and vineyards. The centuries-old national spring fair is when Grottaferrata tells its story best.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Grottaferrata 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Grottaferrata
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Grottaferrata, but an easy day trip away.
chiesa di San Marco 📍 Rovereto · 5.3 km The parish church of Marco di Rovereto, documented from 1180 and rebuilt after the First World War. Biotopo Lavini di Marco 📍 Rovereto · 6.8 km The landslide from Monte Zugna, with dinosaur trackways discovered in 1990 and two small lakes. chiesa di San Floriano 📍 Rovereto · 8.5 km The old mother church of Lizzana, parent of Rovereto's churches, with two sixteenth-century frescoes on the façade. Fondazione Opera Campana dei Caduti 📍 Rovereto · 9.4 km Rovereto's bell, cast from the bronze of every belligerent's cannon. sacrario militare di Castel Dante 📍 Rovereto · 9.4 km The First World War ossuary on the hill above Rovereto, with about twenty thousand fallen of several nations. Castel Lizzana 📍 Rovereto · 9.0 km The scant remains of the Castelbarco castle above Lizzana, destroyed by the Venetians in 1439, in the memorial grounds.