Viggiù is the village of the picasass, the stonecutters: the nickname was given to it by the noise that for centuries came out of the courtyards of the old centre, which were workshops for cutting stone. The hills around yielded stone and marble that were easy to work, and the whole local economy was organised around those quarries from the Middle Ages onwards, with craftsmen who handed the trade down within the family. From the twelfth century the artists of this place belonged to the guild of the Maestri comacini, and between the sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth many of them were at work in Rome.
The comune has a second flag besides its coat of arms, and it is that of the firemen of Viggiù: an Italian tricolour with a helmet, axes and a red cross in the white band, in memory of the volunteer corps that has served the village since the end of the nineteenth century. On the hill of Sant'Elia, at six hundred and sixty-five metres, stands instead a church that was once a Cluniac hermitage: a decree of pope Urban II of 1095 records it as dependent on the priory of Vertemate, and in the thirteenth century it was the only church in the diocese dedicated to the prophet Elijah.
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📅 Every year, on the second Sunday of July
Viggiù celebrates Saint Stephen, generally on the second Sunday of July. The Palio dei Rioni, once held in June, was among the town's most distinctive events.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
