Patron saint festival
Feast of the Crowned Virgin
📅 Every year, on Whit Monday
Varallo celebrates its patron, the Crowned Virgin, on the Monday after Pentecost: a movable date that falls on a different day each year between May and June.
Varallo lies almost at the mouth of the Valsesia, where the Mastallone flows into the Sesia, and the stream splits it in two: on one side the historic centre, Varallo Vecchio, on the other the newer districts. The first document naming it is of 10 June 1025, when it was called Varade.
What dominates it is the Sacro Monte, the oldest of the Sacri Monti: Bernardino Caimi, an Observant Friar Minor who had been custodian in the Holy Land, conceived it in 1481 and began it in 1486, and since 2003 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage site. Varallo also holds a gold medal for military valour: on 11 July 1944 the partisan Republic of Valsesia was proclaimed here, with its capital in the town.
The Varallo guide
What to see 6
sacro monte di Varallo · chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie · Museo Calderini and 3 more
Where to stay 18
18 places to stay · top rated: CA' VARADE di Martina Scarduelli 9.4 · Albergo LA COLDRA 9.4
Events & festivals 1
Festivals, food fairs and events throughout the year.
Getting there
Nearest airport: Milano Malpensa, 41 km away
Tours, tickets and experiences
Bookable on GetYourGuideExperiences in Varallo
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Varallo 1
No events match these filters.
What to see in Varallo
sacro monte di Varallo Forty-four chapels and eight hundred life-size statues: the great mountain theatre 
chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie Gaudenzio Ferrari's wall of 1513: twenty panels and a Crucifixion four times their size 
Museo Calderini A natural-history museum founded in 1867 for the schools of Varallo, grown by donation into much more. 
riserva speciale del Sacro Monte di Varallo The wood on the crag that carries the Sacro Monte, protected since 1990 and replanted as a garden. 
collegiata di San Gaudenzio A loggia of twenty-eight arches rings it, and the apse holds a Gaudenzio Ferrari polyptych 
palazzo dei musei di Varallo One building, two museums: the Valsesia picture gallery and the collections of the Calderini. Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Varallo
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Varallo, but an easy day trip away.
chiesa di San Bartolomeo 📍 Trino · 12 km Trino's parish church, rebuilt after the 1628 siege, with a Giovenone triptych of 1516. chiesa di San Michele in Insula 📍 Trino · 12 km Trino's old pieve, on a site the Po once ringed: Romanesque frescoes of the twelfth century. Parco naturale del Bosco della Partecipanza e delle Grange Vercellesi 📍 Trino · 16 km A lowland wood surviving among the paddy fields, run by the same families since 1202. abbazia di Santa Maria di Lucedio 📍 Trino · 18 km Founded by Cistercians in 1123 among the marshes, today a working farm inside its walls. castello di San Genuario 📍 Crescentino · 20 km A monastery of 707, relics given by Lothair in 843, and a castle built to defend them chiesa della Beata Vergine Ausiliatrice 📍 Asti · 21 km Church of Viatosto in Asti, Romanesque and Gothic, with a bell tower of 1266, medieval frescoes and a wooden Madonna.