Patron saint festival
Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary
📅 Every year, on 7 October
On 7 October Villalvernia celebrates its patron Our Lady of the Rosary; the town also preserves Villa Sforzini di Castellar Ponzano, with its park.
The village was called simply Villa until 1413, when Filippo Maria Visconti granted it in fief to Guglielmo d'Alvernia: the family stayed a hundred and sixty-seven years and welded its name to the village's. The settlement comes in two parts, the old borgo above and the lower town, grown on the Scrivia plain after the Serravalle to Tortona road was opened.
The parish church of Santa Maria Assunta stood a halted building site for two centuries, because plague had cut the village from three hundred people to about ninety, and it was finished only in 1840. In December 1944 American aircraft bombed the village heavily to hit the railway offices moved there from Genoa.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Villalvernia 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Villalvernia
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Villalvernia, but an easy day trip away.
monastero di San Placido Calonerò 📍 Messina · 8.4 km Benedictine monastery in Messina, founded in 1361, now an agricultural school since 1901 and Faro DOC winery. chiesa di Santa Maria dei Giardini (Messina) 📍 Messina · 10 km 18th-century church in Messina, built after the 1687 earthquake, with a richly frescoed interior. chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo d'Agrò 📍 Casalvecchio Siculo · 13 km Norman, built in 1117: the Greek inscription over the door names the master mason. chiesa di Santa Maria di Mili 📍 Messina · 13 km One of Sicily's oldest Norman churches, founded in 1090 by Grand Count Roger I near Messina. santuario della Madonna di Dinnammare 📍 Messina · 15 km Sanctuary on Monte Dinnammare, at 1127 metres, patron shrine of nearby Larderia, festival 3-5 August. chiesa di Santa Marina 📍 Messina · 18 km 16th-century church in Cumia Inferiore (Messina), with bells predating the 1908 earthquake.