The town's devotion to Saint Anne goes back to 1615, when the relic of her skull was recovered after a theft; it has been kept ever since in the Palatine Chapel of the Ventimiglia castle. Celebrations start in mid-July with a novena and build toward July 25-27, opening with the Corteo delle Chiavi, a procession of the town keys escorted by mounted lancers.
The high point comes on the evening of the 27th, when the relic is carried down the castle staircase and through nearly two kilometers of the old town, flanked by the local confraternities, before the closing fireworks. July 26, the saint's feast day, is also race day: the Giro podistico internazionale, Europe's oldest road race, first run in 1912.
