Patron saint festival In 316 days
Saint Alexander, patron of the land of the Besozzi Castle
📅 Every year, on 26 August
Besozzo celebrates Saint Alexander on 26 August, in the church dedicated to him together with Saint Tiburtius.
Besozzo lies on the hills between Lake Varese and Lake Maggiore, cut by the river Bardello. Its upper part was fortified early to watch the roads from the Alpine passes, and is still made of the houses of the Besozzi and the Castelbesozzo, two branches of one local family. Theirs is the Castello, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the only stronghold in the Varese area held by a family with feudal rights outside the Visconti house, though allied to it: the town arms keep its crowned eagles beside a red castle.
On the facing hill the religious quarter grew around the Benedictine monastery of Sant'Alessandro, recorded in 968. In 1574 Cardinal Carlo Borromeo moved the seat of the Brebbia pieve here, and for four centuries the provost of Besozzo had some twenty parishes under him. Lower down, the medieval mills on the river gave way to paper and cotton works whose sheds still stand; the memorial to the First World War dead, unveiled in 1927, is a lighthouse.
The Besozzo guide
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Besozzo 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Besozzo
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Besozzo, but an easy day trip away.
chiesa di San Donato 📍 Massimino · 9.3 km The parish church of San Donato in the hamlet of San Vincenzo, baroque, built between 1818 and 1820. monastero di Santo Stefano 📍 Millesimo · 14 km Baroque church and fifteenth-century cloister, Cistercian until 1802, now inside a private castle. castello di Millesimo 📍 Millesimo · 15 km Dismantled in 1553 so the French could not take it, the thirteenth-century keep is open again. Castello di Cairo Montenotte 📍 Cairo Montenotte · 20 km The ruins of the Del Carretto castle above Cairo Montenotte, in the upper Bormida valley. Ferrania Film Museum 📍 Cairo Montenotte · 20 km Six themed rooms in Palazzo Scarampi for the plant that made Ferrania a name in world cinema. castello di Dego 📍 Dego · 24 km Ruins at Cua, above the Val Bormida, and a Napoleonic path that climbs up to them.