Patron saint festival In 314 days
Feast of San Bartolomeo
📅 Every year, on 24 August
On 24 August Arola, a municipality of 250 inhabitants in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, celebrates its patron San Bartolomeo.
Arola closes the head of the Pellino valley, the main stream feeding Lake Orta, and just above it the Colma di Civiasco opens the way into the Valsesia. The land belonged to the bishop of Novara, prince of the Riviera d'Orta, and was run by the Riviera's general council: fifteen representatives, one named by Arola. That order lasted from 1395 to 1767, when the bishop acknowledged Savoyard rule. On the road to the pass, Arola housed one of the bishop's toll collectors.
The arms recall it: a vine twisted round a stake on a green field crossed by a silver river, and in the corner a mitre with a crozier. They lived on goats, chestnuts and hemp; goats grew so numerous that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the villagers had to cap their number to spare crops and woods. At Pianezza an image of the Madonna of Oropa survives on a house wall, that a Protestant family tried to scratch away: they call it the Madonna Sgarfignaa, the scratched Madonna.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Arola 1
No events match these filters.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Arola
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Arola, but an easy day trip away.
Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola 📍 Carpi · 11 km Jesuit church of 1670-1682 in Carpi, on a Greek-cross plan, with scagliola altars and the diocesan museum. Basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta 📍 Carpi · 11 km Carpi cathedral begun in 1514 to Peruzzi's design, reopened in 2017 after the 2012 earthquake. Chiesa di Santa Maria in Castello 📍 Carpi · 12 km Romanesque pieve of 1184, the oldest church in Carpi, with a Peruzzi façade and twelfth-century frescoes. Chiesa di San Bernardino da Siena 📍 Carpi · 12 km Patron church of Carpi, begun in 1604, with the reliquary bust of Saint Bernardino of Siena.