Patron saint festival
Feast of Saint Vigilius
📅 Every year, on 26 September
On 26 September Iseo celebrates Saint Vigilius; the town sits on the shore of Lake Iseo, which takes its name from it, facing Monte Isola.
On the south-eastern shore of the lake that carries its name, Iseo was already a thoroughfare in Roman times: the consular road from Brixia to the Vallis Camunnorum passed here and ended at Rognum, today's Rogno, named after the lake, Sebinus lacus. The earliest chronicles naming the town are from the ninth century, when it belonged to the Brescian monastery of San Salvatore. Frederick Barbarossa took and burned its castle late in the twelfth century; in the thirteenth Iseo fell to the Oldofredi, who left their name on it, and after Carmagnola's Venetian conquest it became the seat of a quadra, an administrative and judicial district that lasted until Venice fell.
The Oldofredi castle has changed trade several times: Franciscan friary, then flats and a spinning mill, today the town library. In piazza Garibaldi the statue of Garibaldi on foot, carved by Pietro Bordini, was unveiled in 1883 by Gabriele Rosa, among the first raised to him in Italy after his death. South of the town the Torbiere del Sebino reserve, 360 hectares of water and reeds left by peat digging, is a wetland of international importance.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Iseo 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Iseo
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Iseo, 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.