Patron saint festival In 148 days
Feast of the holy martyrs
📅 Every year, on 13 March
On 13 March Arona celebrates four patrons together: the martyr saints Gratian, Felinus, Carpophorus and Fidelis.
In 1860, in the peat bog of the Lagoni di Mercurago, the first pile-dwelling settlement ever found in Italy was identified. Of the wooden finds — three spoked wheels and a canoe hollowed from a trunk — only the plaster casts survive: brought out of the peat after millennia, they crumbled away within a short time.
Arona has 14,195 residents on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore. In the castle on the Rocca, in 1538, Carlo Borromeo was born; the pile-dwelling site has been a UNESCO World Heritage listing since 2011.
Fun facts about Arona
The patrons are Saints Gratianus, Felinus, Carpophorus and Fidelis, martyrs, and the feast falls on 13 March. The link is an old one: the present town grew around the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore, founded in 979 by count Amizzone del Seprio, a captain in the service of Otto I, who had the bodies of Gratianus and Felinus brought here. The central square still carries the name of San Graziano.
In 1875 a twenty-year-old passing through wrote a poem at Arona called Rome Unvisited, lamenting that he had to leave Italy without a chance to see Rome. He was Oscar Wilde, travelling with his former classics tutor from Trinity College Dublin.
The Arona guide
What to see 6
Colosso di san Carlo Borromeo · chiesa dei Santi Gratiniano e Felino · Rocca di Arona and 3 more
Where to stay 24
24 places to stay · top rated: Cavaedium Guest House 9.5 · FWL Italian Romance on the Lake 9.4
Events & festivals 2
Next up: Feast of the holy martyrs, Saturday 13 March
Getting there
Nearest airport: Milano Malpensa, 19 km away
Tours, tickets and experiences
Bookable on GetYourGuideExperiences in Arona
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Arona 2
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Festival
Arona in Rosa
📅 Every year, between late July and early August
Four days of concerts, markets and installations along the lakefront, closed by the LUMINA pyromusical show.
What to see in Arona
Colosso di san Carlo Borromeo A copper statue 35 metres tall, blessed in 1698: you can climb inside it, right up into the saint's head. 
chiesa dei Santi Gratiniano e Felino A former abbey church of 979: a Bergognone altarpiece of 1488 and relics displayed every 13 March. 
Rocca di Arona Only fragments remain of the fortress where Carlo Borromeo was born in 1538, dismantled by the French in 1800. 
sacro monte di Arona The Sacro Monte that was never finished: of fifteen planned chapels only three were built, and the colossus re 
chiesa di San Giuseppe A church of 1204 with a surprise beneath the floor: a Gaulish burial ground and a Roman smelting furnace. 
villa Cantoni A nineteenth-century villa below the Rocca with frescoes by Giacomo Casa, left empty for decades after 1943. Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Arona
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Arona, but an easy day trip away.
Cappella di villa Mirabello 📍 Monza · 2.9 km Chapel of villa Mirabello in the Parco di Monza: the Durini villa of 1656-1675, oldest in the park. Villa Reale 📍 Monza · 4.1 km Villa Reale of Monza, Piermarini's neoclassical palace begun in 1777, home to Habsburgs, Napoleon and Savoy. Chiesa di Santa Maria al Carrobiolo 📍 Monza · 4.8 km Church of Santa Maria al Carrobiolo in Monza, with works by Peterzano and Moncalvo, vault frescoed 1707-1709. Chiesa di San Pietro Martire 📍 Monza · 4.8 km San Pietro Martire in Monza, 14th-century church for the Dominican killed in 1252, with a 15th-century cloister. Santuario del Santo Crocifisso 📍 Desio · 5.1 km Desio's Neo-Gothic sanctuary, home to a sixteenth-century crucifix that was crowned in 1948. Duomo di Monza 📍 Monza · 5.2 km Monza Cathedral, founded by Queen Theodelinda around 595, home of the Iron Crown.