Patron saint festival
Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary
📅 Every year, on 7 October
On 7 October Cairate celebrates its patron Our Lady of the Rosary; the town preserves the ancient Monastero di Cairate, today home to a museum.
Manigunda, a noblewoman of the Pavia court, became a nun to discharge a vow after a healing credited to the spring of Bergoro, and in 737 founded here the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria Assunta. She placed it under the bishop of Pavia, not Milan, and it stayed outside the Milanese diocese until 1799. The monastery ran the village too: it named the officer who chaired the small assembly of heads of household, meeting at set intervals over common matters such as the use of the waste land along the Olona.
Until the Council of Trent enclosure was not compulsory and monasteries kept a xenodochium for travellers: legend has it that Frederick Barbarossa slept at Cairate the night before the battle of Legnano, and that the villagers, siding against the emperor, set the dogs barking all night to spoil his rest. He is also said to have carried off from Monza queen Theodelinda's hen with golden chicks and given one to the nuns for their hospitality: that chick is still hidden in the walls, so they say.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Cairate 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Cairate
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Cairate, 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.