Patron saint festival
Feast of Saint Constantius
📅 Every year, on 12 September
On 12 September Villar San Costanzo celebrates Saint Constantius; a legend links the patron to the Ciciu, the rock pillars of the nature reserve named after them.
The coat of arms shows a red abbey behind a reed bed, and the reeds are no ornament: the abbey of San Costanzo is called de Canneto. Monks from Bobbio built it in the eighth century for the Lombard king Ariperto II. The name Villar, common in Piedmont, probably comes from the Occitan Middle Ages.
Above the village stands San Costanzo al Monte, a Romanesque-Gothic sanctuary of the twelfth century: the finest part is the far end, stone apses and an octagonal lantern. The legend tells how the soldier Costanzo, chased through the woods, cursed the Romans: "be stones yourselves". A hundred stayed petrified: they are the Ciciu.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Villar San Costanzo 1
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Near Villar San Costanzo
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Villar San Costanzo, but an easy day trip away.
ricetto di Candelo 📍 Candelo · 6.9 km Two hundred cells inside a pentagon of walls: one of the best preserved ricetti in Europe chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta 📍 Vigliano Biellese · 7.1 km A Romanesque bell tower, a baroque front with a serliana, and a wall dated 1944 Villa Era 📍 Vigliano Biellese · 8.1 km An eighteenth-century farmstead turned into a show villa between 1884 and 1888 Castello di Castellengo 📍 Cossato · 13 km A tenth-century castle turned residence: the Frichignono arms and the Savoy siege that ended in 1409. Ecomuseo del Cossatese e della Baragge 📍 Cossato · 13 km A scattered museum of rural life, with the visitor centre for the Baragge reserve. Villa Ranzoni 📍 Cossato · 13 km The Ranzoni family's eighteenth-century villa, now the municipal library of Cossato.