The village grew around a church built where nobody lived: the clergy of Domodossola founded it between the fourth and fifth centuries on an empty spot in the Val Vigezzo, equally far from every village. Houses came only in the thirteenth century: priests and notaries lived there. A parchment of 1267 counts twelve households. It was simply Santa Maria; “Maggiore” came in the later sixteenth century.
At Crana, its hamlet, Giovanni Paolo Feminis was born in 1666. He left the valley as a boy, opened a distillery in Cologne, and his aqua mirabilis is eau de Cologne. He never saw home again, but he paid for the parish church here and the church at Crana.
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📅 Every year, on 15 August
On 15 August Santa Maria Maggiore, a municipality of 1,264 inhabitants in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, celebrates its patroness Maria Santissima Assunta (Assumption of Mary).
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 Santa Maria Maggiore, but an easy day trip away.
