The Sancarlone is 35 metres tall and crowns the Sacro Monte of Arona, where Saint Charles Borromeo had been born in 1538. His cousin Federico Borromeo willed it, Giovanni Battista Crespi known as il Cerano designed it, and it took seventy-four years of work: the solemn blessing came on 19 May 1698.
What to see
It is made of hammered copper sheets, held together by nails and iron ties on a core that rises as far as the shoulders: a column of stone blocks from the quarries of Angera. The right arm, the one giving the blessing, is a semi-elastic metal structure, built that way to withstand the winds that beat on the lake in winter. The exact measurements have only been known since the restoration completed in 1975: the index finger is nearly two metres long.
Visiting
You really do climb inside. You enter through a fold of the rochet, then a spiral staircase and finally a ladder take you right into the saint's head; through the openings of the eyes and ears people used to look out over the lake, though that is no longer allowed for safety reasons. For nearly two centuries this was the tallest statue in the world that could be entered: only the Statue of Liberty surpassed it, in 1886.
Our editors' tip
In 1869 Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi stopped at Arona on his way back from Egypt, to study how this colossus stood up. Seventeen years later his own statue in New York would overtake the Sancarlone in height, and the colossus of Arona is named on the plaque at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.