Boves lies at the foot of the Maritime Alps, crossed by the Colla stream. The name is recorded from 815 as Bovixium, in a diploma of Louis the Pious confirming the rights of the abbey of San Dalmazzo di Pedona, and comes from the Gaulish bou-, the ox. After the marquises of Busca and Ceva, the Visconti and the Acaja, from 1418 it passed to Savoy with communal autonomy and its own statutes.
On 19 September 1943, the day after the armistice, Boves became the first Italian town struck by a German reprisal against civilians: the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division set fire to more than 350 houses and left dozens dead. Before then the community had answered raids and plagues with civic vows to the Madonna dei Boschi and with the Naviglio canal.
santuario della Madonna dei Boschi · chiesa di San Bartolomeo Apostolo · Museo della Resistenza di Boves and 1 more
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Next up: Saint Bartholomew, patron of a town documented since 815, Tuesday 24 August
Nearest airport: Torino Caselle, 97 km away
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📅 Every year, on 24 August
Boves celebrates Saint Bartholomew on 24 August; the town, first recorded in a document from 815 under the name Bovixium, holds in the sanctuary of the Madonna dei Boschi frescoes by Giacomo Rossignolo, including a celebrated Last Judgement.
santuario della Madonna dei Boschi Born as a chapel by a ford in the woods, with the finest Marian cycle in the Cuneo area. 
chiesa di San Bartolomeo Apostolo The parish church of 1675, its bell tower rebuilt on the tower of the old ricetto. 
Museo della Resistenza di Boves On via Marconi: Adriana Filippi's drawings and the memory of Italy's first Nazi reprisal. Museo etnografico delle Alpi Occidentali On via Filatoio: the tools of farming life and the objects of silkworm rearing. 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.
Outside Boves, but an easy day trip away.
