Monvalle

Province: Varese · Region: Lombardy · Population: 1,944 · Postal code: 21020

Outside the cemetery of Monvalle there are thirty-seven stones. They are not graves: they remember the soldiers of the two world wars whose bodies were never found. In the First World War alone the village lost thirty inhabitants, out of a population that was then about nine hundred and sixty: one in thirty-two.

The name appears for the first time on 23 January 1035, written Mevallo; then Movallo, and towards the end of the thirteenth century Monvale. It probably comes from the Latin imum vallium, at the foot of the mountains, and indeed from the eleventh century onwards the documents record a castrum here. In 1042 a deed registers the donation of a church by the archbishop of Milan Ariberto d'Intimiano. Monvalle was later a fief of the Borromeo Arese, and under Napoleon it was annexed to Leggiuno. It has three ways down to the lake: the Lido, the Gurée beach and the natural harbour of Cantone.

🎉 Festivals and feasts in Monvalle 1

Patron saint festival In 72 days

Feast of Saint Stephen

📅 Every year, on 26 December

On 26 December Monvalle celebrates its patron Saint Stephen, to whom the town's church is dedicated.

What's around

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