Before the baths there was a sacred lake here. In the Iron Age some groups settled on the shores of a basin between the Montagnone hill and Monte Castello, and the place seems to have had religious functions above all: the ancient Veneti knew the healing properties of these waters well and put them down to the goodness of the gods, and the very many ex-votos found along the banks confirm it. The lake was filled in in the third century before Christ. With the Romans came the baths proper, of which there remain the excavations of via Scavi and the Roman villa of via Neroniana; ever since, the water that surfaces from below has not stopped being the economic reason of the place.
About the name, though, it is best to go carefully. Tradition derives Montegrotto from the Latin Mons Aegrotorum, «hill of the sick», because of the hill in the middle of the town where the sick came to be cured with mud and thermal water. The fact is that all through the Middle Ages the town was called San Pietro Montagnone, probably after the Da Montagnone family who held it, and it remained a hamlet of Battaglia until 30 June 1921, when it was detached and made an autonomous comune: the name Montegrotto Terme arrived only in 1934. Local tradition also places here the origin of the Italian saying «in the days when Bertha spun», from an episode of 1084, during the visit of the emperor Henry IV and his wife Bertha of Savoy.
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📅 Every year, on 29 June; on 25 April the pilgrimage to the Black Madonna is held
Montegrotto Terme celebrates Saint Peter the Apostle on 29 June, in the church dedicated to him. On 25 April, the traditional pilgrimage is held to the Sanctuary of Monteortone in Abano Terme, dedicated to the Black Madonna, whose image is kept at the Oratory of Montegrotto Terme.
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 Montegrotto Terme, but an easy day trip away.
