Patron saint festival In 266 days
Feast of Saint Pancras the Bishop
📅 Every year, on 9 July
On 9 July Valdina, a municipality of 1,352 inhabitants in the province of Messina, celebrates its patron Saint Pancras the Bishop (San Pancrazio).
Two knights, two fiefs, two towns. Under the Aragonese the crown land of Rametta was divided and given to Giovanni Rocca, a Pisan, and to Giovanni Mauro, a Genoese: from their names came the hamlets of La Rocca, which today is Roccavaldina, and Maurojanni, which today is Valdina.
Earlier this land had been called Rachal El-melum under the Arabs and Casale del Conte under the Normans; in 1168 William II gave it to the abbess of the Messina monastery of Santa Maria della Scala, and in 1196 queen Constance confirmed the gift. Some think the church of San Pancrazio was a watchtower for ships coming from the Aeolians. There are 1,352 residents.
The Valdina guide
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Valdina 1
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🍝 The flavours of Valdina
Arancino fried rice cone stuffed with ragù, pointed like Etna
Saffron rice, ragù with peas and caciocavallo inside a golden cone-shaped crust: in Catania it is masculine and pointed, and the quarrel with Palermo over the name is serious.
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Pitone messinese fried half-moon pastry filled with escarole, tuma cheese and anchovies
A thin sheet of dough folded into a half-moon and fried, with escarole, tuma cheese, anchovies and black pepper inside: Messina’s street food, to eat hot straight from the rosticceria.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Valdina
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Valdina, but an easy day trip away.
chiesa di San Liberale 📍 Belluno · 18 km A very old little church on the hill of Pedeserva, in Belluno, with a stone-slab roof and a crypt. chiesa dei Santi Gervasio e Protasio 📍 Belluno · 19 km A thirteenth-century church in Belluno divided in two by a wall, between the faithful and the enclosed nuns. chiesa di Sant'Aronne 📍 Belluno · 19 km The parish church of Cusighe, in Belluno, with an altarpiece by Girolamo Denti and a Last Supper by Paris Bordon. chiesa di San Pietro Apostolo 📍 Belluno · 19 km The nineteenth-century parish church of Sargnano, in Belluno, built over almost thirty years, with a Besarel tabernacle. chiesa di Santo Stefano 📍 Belluno · 20 km The Servites' Gothic church in Belluno, in white and red stone, with Brustolon's angels and a 24-hour clock. chiesa di San Rocco 📍 Belluno · 20 km Belluno's votive church, born of the plague of 1530, in Castellavazzo stone, with a canvas by Gaspare Diziani.