Patron saint festival In 112 days
Feast of Saint Blaise
📅 Every year, on 3 February
On 3 February Musso celebrates its patron Saint Blaise, to whom the town's church is dedicated; the Castello di Musso stands in its territory.
The town is famous for a man and for a stone. The man is Gian Giacomo Medici, known as il Medeghino, brother of the future pope Pius the Fourth: between 1522 and 1532, from the inaccessible castle of the Sasso di Musso, he came to control much of the lake and parts of the Brianza. He strengthened the old fortress at three points — the spur overhanging the water, the ledge where the church of Sant'Eufemia now stands, and the summit of the Sasso, where he dug a ditch, the so-called Tagliata, to defend himself from behind as well — and Charles the Fifth recognised his title of marquis on 25 May 1528. He was defeated in what is called the war of Musso by the combined forces of duke Francesco the Second Sforza, the Swiss confederates and the Grisons, and in 1532 the castle was destroyed; on the municipal coat of arms the three castles still recall it. The stone is the marble of Musso, quarried here since antiquity.
The statutes of Como of 1335 record a precious detail: Mussio was the comune which, within the pieve of Dongo, was charged with the upkeep of a precise stretch of the via Regina. The town was later a fief of the Malacrida and, from 1617, of the Bossi. The church of San Biagio is attested as a parish from 1387, when it dropped its old dedication to saint Nazarius: in the churchyard are a marble baptismal basin of the eleventh century and the tombs of the Malacrida. On a ledge of the Sasso stands instead the church of Sant'Eufemia, with the date 1662 on its façade. All around, between 1858 and 1883, Manzi made the Giardino del Merlo, with more than a hundred and twenty species of exotic plants, little bridges, grottoes, tunnels and water tricks, taking his inspiration from gardens he had seen in Liguria. On the road that links Musso to Dongo, on 27 April 1945, Mussolini was captured.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Musso 1
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Near Musso
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Musso, but an easy day trip away.
Villa Pallavicino 📍 Salerano Canavese · 2.8 km The Second Empire villa gazing over the morainic amphitheatre of Ivrea from a hill above Salerano Canavese. Torre di Pramotton 📍 Donnas · 15 km A twelfth-century hexagonal tower at 540 metres, signalling to the Pont-Saint-Martin castle and the fort of Bard. castello di Castellamonte 📍 Castellamonte · 16 km Seven gates in the curtain wall and a fief split into 271 points of jurisdiction. Castello di Suzey 📍 Pont-Saint-Martin · 15 km A ruin above Ivéry: in 1351 the Vallaise held an Ivrea merchant prisoner here for ransom. Bard Fortress 📍 Bard · 19 km Rebuilt in the 19th century, this imposing Savoy fortress is a masterpiece of military engineering in the Aosta Valley. Pont Saint-Martin 📍 Pont-Saint-Martin · 16 km Two thousand years of traffic on a single span: the boldest flat arch left from Roman times.