Since 1695 Roccafranca has been celebrating the fistù, a feast that comes round every five years in May. At its centre are not only the services for the three martyrs venerated in the village — Saint Clare, Saint Vincent and Saint Victorinus — but what the families build with their own hands: the festoons, arch-shaped decorations known here as arcate, with which the doors and windows of the houses are adorned. Each family tries to make its own different from the rest, and since the nineteen-fifties the piantiline have been added, branches planted in the ground and dressed with leaves and peach blossom made of paper.
The name of the village comes from its castle and appears for the first time in a document of the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth century Roccafranca changed hands several times: in 1426 it broke away from Brescia, two years later it ended up among the lands of Carmagnola, then went to the Albini, and in 1453 to Francesco Sforza. In the palace the Martinengo built here, sixteenth-century frescoes signed by Lattanzio Gambara are preserved.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Roccafranca
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Roccafranca, but an easy day trip away.