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When our tour bus stopped at the carpark in front of the San Carlone statue and church in Arona, these car enthusiasts suddenly arrived with their "chariots", giving us an unexpected photo opportunity. Not sure what car this is but I think a red Mustang is parked beside it.

L'enorme statua in bronzo di San Carlo Borromeo edificata ad Arona. Ia statua è cava all'interno e vi si può accedere e salire fino alla testa da dove ammirare il panorama del lago attraverso gli occhi del santo.

Il Colosso di San Carlo Borromeo, eretto nel 1698 sul colle che sovrasta Arona e realizzato da Giovanni Battista Crespi. La statua è alta 23,40 mt e con il piedistallo raggiunge i 35 mt. che ne fanno una delle statue in bronzo più alte al mondo. E' possibile entrare all'interno e raggiungere con una serie di scale la testa dalla quale si ammira il paesaggio attraverso le aperture degli occhi.

When our tour bus stopped at the carpark in front of the San Carlone statue and church in Arona, these car enthusiasts suddenly arrived with their "chariots", giving us an unexpected photo opportunity.

view of Lake Maggiore (from the statue Sancarlone)

view of Lake Maggiore (from the statue Sancarlone)

Arona, Italy

 

Nikon D700 with Nikkor 50mm F1.8 Series E

 

© Brian George

 

Instagram: @briangeorgeml

Statue colossale érigée en 1697 à Arona (Italie), la ville natale de Charles Borromée. Œuvre de Giovanni Battista Crespi, elle mesure 23 mètres sur un piédestal de 12 mètres.

 

Il Sancarlone, The huge Saint Charles : colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo erected in Arona, Italy in 1697. The work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, the statue is 23 m tall and stands on a plinth 12 m in height.

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island (part of New York but physically on the New Jersey side of the New York Harbor) as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

 

The statue is of a robed woman holding a lit flame, and is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf (originally made of stained glass and lit from the inside.) It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 feet (46.02 m) tall, with the pedestal and foundation, it is 305 feet (92.96 m) tall.

 

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States,[2] and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

 

a National Monument in 1924 and restored for her centennial on July 4, 1986.

French sculptor Fredric Bartholdi designed and sculpted the statue.

 

IMAGE taken just prior to a nasty snowstorm From a moving Boat !

 

13-11-2025 - ARONA - (NO)

Lago Maggiore

 

Il Colosso di San Carlo Borromeo, eretto nel 1698 sul colle che sovrasta Arona e realizzato da Giovanni Battista Crespi. La statua è alta 23,40 mt e con il piedistallo raggiunge i 35 mt. che ne fanno una delle statue in bronzo più alte al mondo. E' possibile entrare all'interno e raggiungere con una serie di scale la testa dalla quale si ammira il paesaggio attraverso le aperture degli occhi.

  

PRAKTICA MTL 5 B

obiettivo PENTACON auto 50 MM - f 1,8 - Multi Coating

innesto a vite M 42

Pellicola: AGFA APX 100 ASA @ 200

Sviluppo: KODAK D-76 15:30 20°

Fissaggio: ADOX - 1+4 - 5':00'' - 20°

Scanner EPSON V600 - 2400 dpi

Mia madre Maria Lavinia Bovelli quando aveva 13 anni, con suo fratello Virgilio. Foto scattata nel settembre del 1951 davanti al Colosso di san Carlo Borromeo ad Arona sul Lago Maggiore. it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosso_di_san_Carlo_Borromeo

Devo ringraziare lo zio Virgilio per aver trovato questa foto. Sul retro è annotato il n.16 relativo al rullino, negativo n.10, Lago Maggiore S.Carlo 9 / 51. Scansionata e ritoccata con photoshop.

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My mother Maria Lavinia Bovelli when she was 13 years old, with her brother Virgilio. Photo taken in september of 1951 in front of the Colossus of San Carlo Borromeo in Arona on Lago Maggiore (Italy). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sancarlone

I have to thank uncle Virgilio for having found this picture. Scanned and retouched with photoshop

Statue colossale érigée en 1697 à Arona (Italie), la ville natale de Charles Borromée. Œuvre de Giovanni Battista Crespi, elle mesure 23 mètres sur un piédestal de 12 mètres.

 

Il Sancarlone, The huge Saint Charles : colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo erected in Arona, Italy in 1697. The work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, the statue is 23 m tall and stands on a plinth 12 m in height.

Statue colossale érigée en 1697 à Arona (Italie), la ville natale de Charles Borromée. Œuvre de Giovanni Battista Crespi, elle mesure 23 mètres sur un piédestal de 12 mètres.

 

Il Sancarlone, The huge Saint Charles : colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo erected in Arona, Italy in 1697. The work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, the statue is 23 m tall and stands on a plinth 12 m in height.

Magali avec le Colosse de Saint Charles

 

"Magali a ..." c'est sur le moyen, deux mondes qui se rejoignent! Toutes ces histoires que tant de générations ont croisés à différents stades de leur vie, liés au support qui aurait pu les fixer sur les 60 ans qui font le vécu de Martine et du Rolleiflex ici exploité.

Alors, il en né, ici, de nouvelles aventures à construire et inventer, pour, d'un négatif en révéler tous les périples futurs comme une multitude d'histoires, qui en font le réel, commun et le tout.

 

Série Magali a...

 

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San Carlo Borromeo

Il Colosso di San Carlo Borromeo (detto il Sancarlone o, nel dialetto locale el Sancarlùn), è una statua alta oltre 30 metri situata ad Arona (NO) nella frazione di San Carlo, sul Sacro Monte di San Carlo.

Picture taken from the Staten Island Ferry.

 

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island (owned by New York but physically on the New Jersey side of the New York Harbor) as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

 

The statue is of a woman holding a lit flame. The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf (originally made of stained glass and lit from the inside.) It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 feet tall, with the pedestal and foundation, it is 305 feet (92.99 m] tall.

 

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes. [from Wikipedia]

Statue colossale érigée en 1697 à Arona (Italie), la ville natale de Charles Borromée. Œuvre de Giovanni Battista Crespi, elle mesure 23 mètres sur un piédestal de 12 mètres.

 

Il Sancarlone, The huge Saint Charles : colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo erected in Arona, Italy in 1697. The work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, the statue is 23 m tall and stands on a plinth 12 m in height.

Colossi di san Carlo Borromeo

Statue colossale érigée en 1697 à Arona (Italie), la ville natale de Charles Borromée. Œuvre de Giovanni Battista Crespi, elle mesure 23 mètres sur un piédestal de 12 mètres.

 

Il Sancarlone, The huge Saint Charles : colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo erected in Arona, Italy in 1697. The work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, the statue is 23 m tall and stands on a plinth 12 m in height.

The massive 35-metres high statue of San Carlo Borromeo, Sacro Monte di Arona.

Statue colossale érigée en 1697 à Arona (Italie), la ville natale de Charles Borromée. Œuvre de Giovanni Battista Crespi, elle mesure 23 mètres sur un piédestal de 12 mètres.

 

Il Sancarlone, The huge Saint Charles : colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo erected in Arona, Italy in 1697. The work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, the statue is 23 m tall and stands on a plinth 12 m in height.

Statue colossale érigée en 1697 à Arona (Italie), la ville natale de Charles Borromée. Œuvre de Giovanni Battista Crespi, elle mesure 23 mètres sur un piédestal de 12 mètres.

 

Il Sancarlone, The huge Saint Charles : colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo erected in Arona, Italy in 1697. The work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, the statue is 23 m tall and stands on a plinth 12 m in height.

L'imponenza di questa statua alta 30 metri è impressionante. Per chi volesse ora con 6 euro si può salire fin dentro la testa

The Statue of Liberty, or, more formally, Liberty Enlightening the World, was presented to the United States by the people of France in 1886. Standing on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, it welcomes visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans traveling by ship.[5] The copper-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence and is a gesture of friendship from France to the United States.[6] Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue[7] and obtained a U.S. patent for its structure.[8] Maurice Koechlin - chief engineer of Gustave Eiffel's engineering company and designer of the Eiffel Tower - engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique, where a malleable metal is hammered on the reverse side.[9]

 

The statue is of a robed woman holding a torch, and is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf (originally made of copper and later altered to hold glass panes.) It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 ft (46 m) tall, but with the pedestal and foundation, it is 305 ft (93 m) tall.

 

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States[10] and was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

 

The statue is the central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, administered by the National Park Service.

 

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island, New York in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

 

The statue is of a female figure standing upright, dressed in a robe and a seven point spiked rays representing a nimbus (halo), holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand. The tablet bears the words "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence.

 

The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 feet 1 inch (46.5 m) tall, with the pedestal and foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 m).

 

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States,[2] and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

 

The statue is a central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, administered by the National Park Service.

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), was presented to the United States by the people of France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island (part of New York but physically on the New Jersey side of the New York Harbor) as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to the U.S. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

The statue is of a robed woman holding a lit flame, and is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf (originally made of stained glass and lit from the inside.) It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 ft (46 m) tall, but with the pedestal and foundation, it is 305 ft (93 m) tall.

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

The statue is a central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, administered by the National Park Service.

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde). Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), was presented to the United States by the people of France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island (part of New York but physically on the New Jersey side of New York Harbor) as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to the U.S. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

 

The statue is of a robed woman holding a lit flame, and is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf (originally made of copper and later altered to hold glass panes.) It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 ft (46 m) tall, but with the pedestal and foundation, it is 305 ft (93 m) tall.

 

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

Già da lontano si rimane sopresi dalla sua imponenza

Statue colossale érigée en 1697 à Arona (Italie), la ville natale de Charles Borromée. Œuvre de Giovanni Battista Crespi, elle mesure 23 mètres sur un piédestal de 12 mètres.

 

Il Sancarlone, The huge Saint Charles : colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo erected in Arona, Italy in 1697. The work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, the statue is 23 m tall and stands on a plinth 12 m in height.

The Sacro Monte di Arona, devoted to Charles Borromeo, is part of the Sacri Monti built in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is located in the territory of the town of Arona, province of Novara, region of Piedmont, Italy.

 

Around 1610 (when Charles Borromeo was canonized) father Marco Aurelio Grattarola had the idea of building a Sacro Monte devoted to Saint Charles on a hill behind his native town. The work was intended to celebrate the archbishop of Milan in the territory of his family.

 

The greatness of the figure inspired the idea of a huge statue visible from the opposite side of the Lake Maggiore. The initiative received the support of Federico Borromeo, who succeeded the cousin as archbishop of Milan.

 

The architect Francesco Maria Richini was charged with the project. He proposed an ambitious project, only partially realised. Starting with a triumphal arch, three paths should have started, each one with five chapels illustrating the life of Saint Charles and his spirituality.

 

In July 1614 Federico Borromeo celebrated the start of the construction. One of the first buildings to be completed was the church, designed by Richini as a central plan church.

 

Only a few chapels were built. Today only three remain, but without the decorations. For the realisation of the statues artists involved in the construction of the Sacro Monte di Varallo came.

 

The death of father Grattarola in 1615, the plague of 1629-1631 and the death of Federico Borromeo in 1631 interrupted the works. Only in 1692, the Borromeo family started again the construction. The new project, made by the architect Carlo Fontana, was far more modest than the original.

 

The sanctuary was completed only in 1725 with the building of the roof. Today over the main altar there is a painting by Giulio Cesare Procaccini; behind the altar has been reconstructed the original room of Saint Charles with the furniture coming from the Rocca Borromea nearby.

 

In front of the church, on the opposite side of the square, is " Saint Charles' seminary". From the square, a stairway takes you to the colossal statue of Saint Charles. The statue's design was made by Giovanni Battista Crespi, called il Cerano.

 

The statue, 28 m in height, commonly called Sancarlone, was realised in 1698. It is an empty structure made of wrought copper. It is possible to climb up to the head thanks to an inner stairway. Only the Statue of Liberty is a taller metal statue.

 

Arona, Aruna in Novara dialect , Aron-a in Piedmontese) is an Italian municipality of 13,693 inhabitants in the province of Novara , in Piedmont .

 

The sixth municipality in the province by population, it is a tourist - tertiary center on the shores of Lake Maggiore , whose development has been favored by its position on the Via del Sempione and the motorway and railway connection with Milan .

 

In the municipality there is the Lagoni di Mercurago natural park , included among the " prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps ", since 2011 in the UNESCO world heritage list

 

Physical geography

The city of Arona is located on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore and is crossed by the Vevera stream , which flows into the lake here. The hilly bas-reliefs of morainic origin extend all around (called "mottos"), incorporated into the Lagoni di Mercurago Natural Park where, in 1860 , the first pile-dwelling settlement found in Italy was identified . Most of the municipal territory is also hilly, with altitudes that progressively slope down from north to south (and from west to east in the town centre) from 513 m at Motto Mirabello (near the Dagnente hamlet ) up to 195 m on the shore at the lake.

 

The hilly reliefs are generally covered by woods which occupy over half of the Arona area, urbanized areas cover 33% of the surface and meadows or pastures cover 9%; smaller percentages are intended for parks, gardens and green sports areas (2.3%), vegetable gardens, orchards, nurseries and vineyards (1.7%), herbaceous uncultivated areas (1%) and arable land (0.4%).

 

Located in the southernmost part of the lake, Arona is about 37 km from the provincial capital Novara , but only about thirty from Milan-Malpensa airport .

 

Origins of the name

The toponym could derive from the Celtic roots art (mountain) and on (water), with the meaning of "mountain on the water" [ without source ] .

 

History

Origins

From Arona, in Roman times , passed the Via Severiana Augusta , a Roman consular road that connected Mediolanum (modern Milan ) with the Verbannus Lacus (Lake Verbano, or Lake Maggiore ), and from here to the Sempione pass ( lat. Summo Plano ).

 

The first written documentation confirming the existence of a socially organized locality called Arona dates back to 979 : it is a attestation that allows us to identify this date only by induction, so much so that some historians instead maintain that it is 963 .

 

In any case, the presence of man in this southern part of Lake Maggiore is confirmed much further back in time and dates back to prehistory ; in fact, in the Lagoni area, near the hamlet of Mercurago, a pile-dwelling settlement dating back to the Bronze Age (active from the 18th to the 13th century BC ) and, in 1971-1972, a necropolis of the Golasecca civilization from the end of the 6th century were discovered. - early 5th century BC Human traces are also documented in the Motto San Carlo peat bog , in which an arrowhead dating back to the Neolithic and the only object from the Copper Age was found .

 

Of the wooden finds extracted in the 19th century , such as the remains of three wheels that turned idle on a central axis and were equipped with rudimentary non-concentric spokes and those of a pirogue dug into a tree trunk, only the plaster casts remain. They were obtained from footprints in the peat by Bartolomeo Gastaldi , who collected and studied them at the time but was unable to treat them adequately for conservation given the restoration methods of the time so that, preserved for millennia in the particular anaerobic environmental conditions of the peat bog, they crumbled to dehydration shortly after their discovery. The remains of a village were also found whose huts had been built on the edge of a body of water and whose foundations had been preserved thanks to the peat in which they had been planted, as well as various everyday objects in metal or ceramic: jars, vase bottoms, plates, arrows, dagger blades and other defense tools, bronze pins. From the dozen tombs of the 6th century BC come vases of fine workmanship, bracelets, fibulae , rings, bronze belt hooks. The ceramics found in large quantities around the Rocca di Arona testify to a settlement subsequent to that of the Lagoni and have been assigned to the Canegrate , Protogolasecca and Golasecca cultures .

 

The Celt Gauls

The 5th century marks a moment of crisis in the lower Verbano area, and only in the 3rd-2nd century does a conspicuous presence of people reappear, this time Celto-Gallic . A valuable bronze anklet found at the foot of the fortress dates back to the 2nd century BC . It is precisely in this period that the first socially organized residential units were formed. The urbanization of the area is fully justified by the presence of the Rocca di Arona , as opposed to the Rocca di Angera on the Lombard shore of the lake, a position of strategic importance that could not go unnoticed by any local population. In fact, on the fortress there are the remains of a pre-Roman fortification, and three kilometers from Arona, the military campus of Borgo Agnello and Paruzzaro .

 

The Romans and the Middle Ages

In Roman times it was a place of passage towards the Simplon pass . Under the church of San Giuseppe the remains of a furnace and an artisan workshop for metalworking were found . Roman colonization is also documented by funerary tombstones found almost everywhere in the area.

 

The current inhabited center developed around the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore, founded in 979 by Count Amizzone del Seprio. The proof of this development is documented in a "Chronicle" or " Pasionario ", a kind of medley in which lives of more or less reliable saints, texts of asceticism, letters of bishops and prelates , prayers and invocations are intertwined . In this context appears the narrative of the martyrdom of San Graziano and San Felino which occurred in 979 with the translation of their bodies to Arona, by Count Amizzone del Seprio, a troop captain under the command of Emperor Otto I. There are 249 sheets of parchment written in medieval Latin and written in Gothic . Over time, the Benedictine abbey lost its main prerogatives, mainly due to the rise of a civil authority which identified itself first with the Della Torre family , and subsequently, after its demolition, with the Visconti family , first of all Ottone who was archbishop of Milan , around the end of the thirteenth century under which the dominion of the archbishop of Milan passed . In 1263, the Milanese forces, led by the Torriani , besieged Arona by land and water, where the Milanese exiles led by Ottone Visconti had gathered [9] . Between the two hundred and three hundred years old, Stefano Visconti (1287/88 - 1327) appears to have been a Lord, married for the second time in 1318 to Valentina, daughter of Bernabó Doria, Lord of Sassello and Eliana Fieschi of the Lords of Lavagna. Stefano and Valentina had Matteo II, Galeazzo II and Bernabó Visconti, Consignori of Milan from 11 October 1354. Formerly property of the Torriani family ( 12th century ). After the battle of Desio ( 1277 ), it belonged to the family of Ottone Visconti, Visconti and from the third or fourth decade of the 14th century it was a free municipality under the government of the Benedictine abbey.

 

The Renaissance

From 1439 the territory was granted as a fief to the Borromeo family , a lineage of bankers originally from San Miniato in Tuscany . When the Visconti family became extinct with Filippo's daughter Maria Visconti marrying Francesco I in 1441 , the duchy passed to the Sforza family . But this vast territory also had to be defended, and in this sense Vitaliano in 1447 asked Filippo Maria for authorization to fortify the fortress and the village of Arona, granted to him in 1449 with a letter from Filippo Maria which authorized his vassal to create walls, drawbridges, war defense works, and also places for the gathering and custody of ships: first documented military port on Lake Maggiore . The fortress was defended so well that it resisted a siege in 1523 by 7,000 men under the command of Renzo de Ceri , one of the many wars that broke out between the Duchy of Milan and the French .

 

Modern era

During the Thirty Years' War , in 1636, the French, to prevent navigation between the lake and Milan, set up a ship equipped with four cannons, on which 100 musketeers embarked and placed it in front of Arona. The Spaniards then had some boats armed and, after some fighting, forced the French ship to retreat along the Ticino [10] . With the entire Duchy of Milan it was under Spanish and then Austrian rule . With the Treaty of Worms (1743) it passed into the dominions of the Savoy state , under Charles Emmanuel III .

 

It was taken by the Napoleonic army and the fortress was demolished following the peace agreements with the Austrians in 1801. With the Congress of Vienna in 1815 it was returned to the Savoy family . In 1838 Carlo Alberto of Savoy awarded it the title of city .

 

In 1848 Giuseppe Garibaldi entered the city during the first war of independence , returning in 1859.

 

In 1855 the railway line to Novara was opened and during the 19th century industrial and tourist activities established themselves. At the end of the century it suffered a disastrous lake flood.

 

On 15 September 1943, the roundups of Jews that began in the days preceding Baveno affected the town of Arona, part of that massacre on Lake Maggiore of which in the end there were 57 victims. There were 9 people arrested and killed in Arona by German soldiers, Their bodies were thrown into the lake. The large family of the Milanese industrialist Federico Jarach managed to save themselves by crossing the lake by boat from their villa, because they were notified by telephone just in time.

 

Symbols

Coat of arms

The coat of arms was recognized with DCG of 10 August 1928.

 

«Party of silver and green, the lowered fly and a star divided from the score line of one to the other . Exterior ornaments of the city."

 

The heraldic figure of flight (two spread wings) refers to the toponym Alona documented in ancient manuscripts. The coat of arms is reproduced on the frontispiece of the Statutes of Arona of 1319 although the design is certainly later and features wings and a gold star on a red background.

 

Banner

The banner was granted by royal decree of 7 May 1934.

 

«Dress made of white and green, richly decorated with gold embroidery and bearing the municipal coat of arms with the inscription centered in gold City of Arona .»

 

Flag

The Municipality has adopted a flag consisting of a white and green flag placed in the center of the civic emblem without shield and ornaments.

 

Monuments and places of interest

Piazza del Popolo with the church of Santa Maria di Loreto

Collegiate Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary . The parish church, whose first contract for its construction dates back to 1468, was consecrated, not yet finished, on 12 March 1488. At the beginning of the 17th century Cardinal Federico Borromeo ordered impressive restoration and interior decoration works, upon completion of which, on 10 March 1608, the church was erected as a collegiate church . After the substantial repairs of 1856-1867 it was reconsecrated in 1858 by bishop GF Gentile. It is in Gothic-Byzantine style, altered by later elements. The limestone façade, with a central rose window, has fifteenth-century elements, and a notable bas-relief of the Nativity of the Redeemer, ascribed by Luca Beltrami to the Mantegazza brothers, authors of the lower part of the Certosa di Pavia . Inside you can admire the main altar built in 1812 based on a design by Abbot Zanoia; the Holy Family by Gaudenzio Ferrari in six fields, with the signature Gaudentius Vincius and the date '15', on wood and closed in a carved frame of the time; the Nativity by Andrea Appiani ; the Annunciation and the Marriage by Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone , donated by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Furthermore, four reliquaries are preserved there which contain the pallium, the miter and the crosier of San Carlo Borromeo donated by Cardinal Federico. They were renewed in 1920 by the citizens of Arono in fulfillment of a vow made during the last influenza pandemic, which was considered to have ended through the saint's intercession.

Church of the Holy Martyrs Graziano, Felino, Fedele and Carpoforo (also known as San Graziano). Formerly a Benedictine abbey, the church was annexed to the monastery of the Salvatore and Saints Graziano and Felino, founded in the second half of the 10th century. No traces of the original building remain. Completely rebuilt, it was returned to worship the year following the consecration of the Collegiate Church, 1489. In the church there is an altarpiece of the Madonna Enthroned and Saint by Ambrogio da Fossano, known as Bergognone , hanging behind the main altar. The painting was commissioned by the abbot of the time, Monsignor Girolamo Calagrani, who in the painting appears kneeling in front of the Virgin.

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta) in the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the Broletto and what remains of the ancient port are also located .

Church of the Visitation, annexed to the monastery of the order of the Visitation, was founded in 1652 by the archpriest Graziano Ponzone. On the main altar of the church there is a canvas by the painter Gaudenzio Magistrini (1820-1871).

Beolchi Chapel-Ossuary

Sanctuary of the Sacro Monte of San Carlo

Visitation Monastery

Small church of San Giuseppe , formerly dedicated to Sant'Eusebio

Parish church of San Giusto (in the hamlet of Montrigiasco )

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta)

Church of San Giovanni Battista (in the Dagnente hamlet )

Church of San Giorgio (in Mercurago )

Church of the Holy Trinity

Church of the Sacred Heart

Church of Saints Anna and Gioacchino, in Corso Cavour (built in 1721, with façade rebuilt in 1841; altarpiece by Giuseppe De Albertis, from Arona, with Saints Anna and Gioacchino with the young Mary )

 

Civil and military architecture

Broletto or Palace of Justice, built at the end of the fourteenth century on the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the church of Santa Maria di Loreto also stands. Between the Gothic arches of the portico are terracotta medallions with portraits of the nobles governing the city.

Villa Ponti, which hosted Napoleon Bonaparte on his return from the Egyptian campaign and where classical music concerts and exhibitions of important artists are currently organised.

Villa Leuthold, a nineteenth-century public park, with very large specimens of camellias.

Rocca Borromea , whose ruins are located on the hill above the city. It was historically disputed between the Torriani and Visconti families as well as the birthplace of San Carlo .

Asilo Bottelli , a 19th century building in neoclassical style originally used as a nursery school.

Villa Cantoni , built in the 1880s.

The Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo

 

The same topic in detail: Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo .

This statue, nicknamed the Sancarlone , dominates Lake Maggiore and can be reached by taking the provincial road 35 towards the Ghevio di Meina hamlet , in the San Carlo area. The colossus is approximately 35 meters high (23.40 m for the statue and 11.70 m for the base) and was built between 1614 and 1697 with copper plates . Originally it was planned that the statue, completed in 1698 , would be part of a Sacred Mountain of which, however, only three chapels were built.

 

Society

Demographic evolution

Inhabitants registered

 

Languages ​​and dialects

Even though the city is in Piedmontese territory, the local Verbanese dialect is of the Insubre type ( Western Lombard ).

 

Culture

Museums

The Mineralogical Museum founded in 1983 and located in a nineteenth-century building in Piazza San Graziano.

The Khaled al-Asaad Civic Archaeological Museum .

Libraries

There is the Carlo Torelli Civic Library , founded in 1968

 

Economy

The definitive destruction of the Aronese fortress together with six other citadels in Piedmont was ordered by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 , the day following the victory at Marengo . This meant the possibility of expanding the urban fabric beyond the walls within which it was limited. Thanks to this, large spaces were created on which to build the port, the boatyard and the railway station. Arona's fortune has always been linked to its excellent geographical position, thanks to which it enjoys and has always enjoyed a highly respectable logistical condition.

 

The economy of Arona is mainly based on tourism and trade , although in the area there are some important chemical factories, such as Thurckon Srl, and confectionery, such as the Laica chocolate shop .

 

Infrastructure and transport

The station, under the responsibility of the Lombardy Region, is an important railway hub between the Domodossola-Milan and Arona-Novara lines , and is currently served only by regional trains based on the Service Contract stipulated between Trenitalia/Trenord and the Piedmont and Lombardy Regions. It is also the terminus of the Santhià-Arona railway , which has been replaced by self-service since 17 June 2012.

 

Arona is the headquarters of Navigazione Lago Maggiore.

 

Sports

Twice Arona was the stage arrival site of the Giro d'Italia .

 

1966 14th stage Parma - Arona, won by Franco Bitossi

2001 20th stage Busto Arsizio -Arona, won by Gilberto Simoni

On 24 August 2005 Damiano Cunego won the 8th edition of the Gran Premio Nobili in Arona.

 

The Arona football club is based in the municipality , whose internal field is the Valerio Del Ponte stadium .

 

There is an American football team , the Arona 65ers , Italian champions in 2015 and a basketball team, Arona Basket , which participates in the youth and Serie C championships.

The Sacro Monte of Arona , dedicated to San Carlo , must be considered part of that system of pre-Alpine Sacred Mountains which characterized, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries , the great inspiration of popular religiosity that expressed itself between Piedmont and Lombardy .

 

The history and artistic connotations

The initiative to build a Sacro Monte dedicated to San Carlo Borromeo on a hill behind the city of Arona , where the saint was born in 1538 , was promoted by the oblate father Marco Aurelio Grattarola close to the beatification ceremony of the Saint ( 1610 ).

 

The chosen natural environment is of significant landscape interest: the view of Lake Maggiore from that hill is beautiful .

 

The project conceived by Father Grattarola was to celebrate - precisely in the lands belonging to the Borromeo family and in the setting of Lake Maggiore - the figure of the Archbishop of Milan whose still very vivid memory shone "great in charity, great in doctrine, great in the apostolate , and great above all in piety and devotion".

 

From the need to express the greatness of the Saint immediately arose the idea of ​​erecting a colossal statue, to be placed at the top of the mountain, so that it was also visible from the other side of the lake.

 

The initiative immediately received the applause and support of Federico Borromeo who in the meantime had succeeded the Saint - whose cousin he was - at the head of the Milanese archdiocese .

 

The architect Francesco Maria Ricchino (or Richini) – a very prominent figure in the Lombard Baroque panorama – was entrusted with the project. He proposed a very ambitious solution which – as happened for most of the Sacred Mountains – was then only very partially implemented.

 

Starting from a triumphal arch, placed at the foot of the hill as the entry point of the devotional route, three paths were to branch off which climbed up the slopes of the mountain; on each of them five chapels , with their complement of statues and frescoed walls, would have told the most significant actions relating to the pastoral work of San Carlo (the "active life"); higher up, other chapels were supposed to illustrate the examples of spirituality he offered (the "contemplative life").

 

In July 1614 , in the presence of an overwhelming multitude of faithful, Federico Borromeo celebrated the beginning of the construction work on the Sacro Monte of Arona. Not far away, in those years of extraordinary popular fervor, the ones in Orta and the one in Varese were under construction .

 

Among the priority commitments in carrying out the works was the construction of the sanctuary (or church of San Carlo) located on the top of the mountain and designed by Ricchino as a centrally planned building, rich in classical reminiscences.

 

Only a few of the chapels foreseen by Ricchino's project were built: today just three remain, elegant in their classical style, but now devoid of the decorative apparatus of which almost nothing is known. However, it is known - confirming the ambitions of the initial project - that Melchiorre d'Enrico , brother and collaborator of Giovanni d'Enrico , the great protagonist of the works at the Sacro Monte of Varallo , was consulted for the creation of the terracotta statues . In fact, difficulties in implementing the project soon arose due to a multiplicity of factors: the premature death of Father Grattarola ( 1615 ), then the terrible social and economic difficulties brought by the " Manzonian " plague of 1629-31 , then again his death . of Cardinal Borromeo ( 1631 ). The Sacro Monte project - whose direction had passed to the Conservators of the Ambrosiana Library - experienced years of difficulty and the chapels already built began to decay.

 

A more convinced revival of the implementation program occurred only starting from 1692 , again at the behest of the Borromeo family who involved the pontifical architect Carlo Fontana in the new works . The new construction program scaled down the one envisioned by Grattarola and Federico Borromeo: the very idea of ​​the Sacred Mount was, in fact, abandoned, with a multiplicity of chapels capable of celebrating the life of the Saint.

 

The sanctuary was completed only in 1725 with the construction of the roof.

 

Description

Today inside the sanctuary, above the main altar, we find a canvas by Giulio Cesare Procaccini ; Behind the altar was placed the reconstruction of the original room of San Carlo, obtained by gathering together the furnishings that had been saved from the Napoleonic destruction of the nearby Rocca Borromea , and some relics of the Saint including for example his funeral mask and his sedan chair.

 

In front of the church, on the other side of the square, there is the large "seminary of San Carlo" which was already completed in 1640 (and which was then significantly enlarged at the beginning of the 20th century ), today it houses an educational institute.

 

Also from the square you access the staircase that leads to the high granite base on which stands the colossal copper statue of San Carlo, conceived, from the beginning, as a crowning achievement and as a strong element of identity of the Sacro Monte. The design of the statue is the work of Giovanni Battista Crespi, known as Cerano , an artist particularly dear to Federico Borromeo, who for a certain time was in charge of the work.

 

The work, 28 meters high (which popular devotion soon designated with the name of San Carlone ), was created, not without technical difficulties, by the sculptors Siro Zanella of Pavia and Bernardo Falconi of Lugano : its completion dates back to 1698 . It is a hollow statue made of large sheets of beaten copper; it is possible for the visitor to climb an internal staircase to the head of the colossus. Only the Statue of Liberty in New York , among metal statues, surpasses it in height.

The colossus of San Carlo (which should have been placed in the perspective of the last chapels located along the path of the Sacro Monte, as its crowning feature) has today become the almost exclusive attraction of the site.

 

Arona, Aruna in Novara dialect , Aron-a in Piedmontese) is an Italian municipality of 13,693 inhabitants in the province of Novara , in Piedmont .

 

The sixth municipality in the province by population, it is a tourist - tertiary center on the shores of Lake Maggiore , whose development has been favored by its position on the Via del Sempione and the motorway and railway connection with Milan .

 

In the municipality there is the Lagoni di Mercurago natural park , included among the " prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps ", since 2011 in the UNESCO world heritage list

 

Physical geography

The city of Arona is located on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore and is crossed by the Vevera stream , which flows into the lake here. The hilly bas-reliefs of morainic origin extend all around (called "mottos"), incorporated into the Lagoni di Mercurago Natural Park where, in 1860 , the first pile-dwelling settlement found in Italy was identified . Most of the municipal territory is also hilly, with altitudes that progressively slope down from north to south (and from west to east in the town centre) from 513 m at Motto Mirabello (near the Dagnente hamlet ) up to 195 m on the shore at the lake.

 

The hilly reliefs are generally covered by woods which occupy over half of the Arona area, urbanized areas cover 33% of the surface and meadows or pastures cover 9%; smaller percentages are intended for parks, gardens and green sports areas (2.3%), vegetable gardens, orchards, nurseries and vineyards (1.7%), herbaceous uncultivated areas (1%) and arable land (0.4%).

 

Located in the southernmost part of the lake, Arona is about 37 km from the provincial capital Novara , but only about thirty from Milan-Malpensa airport .

 

Origins of the name

The toponym could derive from the Celtic roots art (mountain) and on (water), with the meaning of "mountain on the water" [ without source ] .

 

History

Origins

From Arona, in Roman times , passed the Via Severiana Augusta , a Roman consular road that connected Mediolanum (modern Milan ) with the Verbannus Lacus (Lake Verbano, or Lake Maggiore ), and from here to the Sempione pass ( lat. Summo Plano ).

 

The first written documentation confirming the existence of a socially organized locality called Arona dates back to 979 : it is a attestation that allows us to identify this date only by induction, so much so that some historians instead maintain that it is 963 .

 

In any case, the presence of man in this southern part of Lake Maggiore is confirmed much further back in time and dates back to prehistory ; in fact, in the Lagoni area, near the hamlet of Mercurago, a pile-dwelling settlement dating back to the Bronze Age (active from the 18th to the 13th century BC ) and, in 1971-1972, a necropolis of the Golasecca civilization from the end of the 6th century were discovered. - early 5th century BC Human traces are also documented in the Motto San Carlo peat bog , in which an arrowhead dating back to the Neolithic and the only object from the Copper Age was found .

 

Of the wooden finds extracted in the 19th century , such as the remains of three wheels that turned idle on a central axis and were equipped with rudimentary non-concentric spokes and those of a pirogue dug into a tree trunk, only the plaster casts remain. They were obtained from footprints in the peat by Bartolomeo Gastaldi , who collected and studied them at the time but was unable to treat them adequately for conservation given the restoration methods of the time so that, preserved for millennia in the particular anaerobic environmental conditions of the peat bog, they crumbled to dehydration shortly after their discovery. The remains of a village were also found whose huts had been built on the edge of a body of water and whose foundations had been preserved thanks to the peat in which they had been planted, as well as various everyday objects in metal or ceramic: jars, vase bottoms, plates, arrows, dagger blades and other defense tools, bronze pins. From the dozen tombs of the 6th century BC come vases of fine workmanship, bracelets, fibulae , rings, bronze belt hooks. The ceramics found in large quantities around the Rocca di Arona testify to a settlement subsequent to that of the Lagoni and have been assigned to the Canegrate , Protogolasecca and Golasecca cultures .

 

The Celt Gauls

The 5th century marks a moment of crisis in the lower Verbano area, and only in the 3rd-2nd century does a conspicuous presence of people reappear, this time Celto-Gallic . A valuable bronze anklet found at the foot of the fortress dates back to the 2nd century BC . It is precisely in this period that the first socially organized residential units were formed. The urbanization of the area is fully justified by the presence of the Rocca di Arona , as opposed to the Rocca di Angera on the Lombard shore of the lake, a position of strategic importance that could not go unnoticed by any local population. In fact, on the fortress there are the remains of a pre-Roman fortification, and three kilometers from Arona, the military campus of Borgo Agnello and Paruzzaro .

 

The Romans and the Middle Ages

In Roman times it was a place of passage towards the Simplon pass . Under the church of San Giuseppe the remains of a furnace and an artisan workshop for metalworking were found . Roman colonization is also documented by funerary tombstones found almost everywhere in the area.

 

The current inhabited center developed around the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore, founded in 979 by Count Amizzone del Seprio. The proof of this development is documented in a "Chronicle" or " Pasionario ", a kind of medley in which lives of more or less reliable saints, texts of asceticism, letters of bishops and prelates , prayers and invocations are intertwined . In this context appears the narrative of the martyrdom of San Graziano and San Felino which occurred in 979 with the translation of their bodies to Arona, by Count Amizzone del Seprio, a troop captain under the command of Emperor Otto I. There are 249 sheets of parchment written in medieval Latin and written in Gothic . Over time, the Benedictine abbey lost its main prerogatives, mainly due to the rise of a civil authority which identified itself first with the Della Torre family , and subsequently, after its demolition, with the Visconti family , first of all Ottone who was archbishop of Milan , around the end of the thirteenth century under which the dominion of the archbishop of Milan passed . In 1263, the Milanese forces, led by the Torriani , besieged Arona by land and water, where the Milanese exiles led by Ottone Visconti had gathered [9] . Between the two hundred and three hundred years old, Stefano Visconti (1287/88 - 1327) appears to have been a Lord, married for the second time in 1318 to Valentina, daughter of Bernabó Doria, Lord of Sassello and Eliana Fieschi of the Lords of Lavagna. Stefano and Valentina had Matteo II, Galeazzo II and Bernabó Visconti, Consignori of Milan from 11 October 1354. Formerly property of the Torriani family ( 12th century ). After the battle of Desio ( 1277 ), it belonged to the family of Ottone Visconti, Visconti and from the third or fourth decade of the 14th century it was a free municipality under the government of the Benedictine abbey.

 

The Renaissance

From 1439 the territory was granted as a fief to the Borromeo family , a lineage of bankers originally from San Miniato in Tuscany . When the Visconti family became extinct with Filippo's daughter Maria Visconti marrying Francesco I in 1441 , the duchy passed to the Sforza family . But this vast territory also had to be defended, and in this sense Vitaliano in 1447 asked Filippo Maria for authorization to fortify the fortress and the village of Arona, granted to him in 1449 with a letter from Filippo Maria which authorized his vassal to create walls, drawbridges, war defense works, and also places for the gathering and custody of ships: first documented military port on Lake Maggiore . The fortress was defended so well that it resisted a siege in 1523 by 7,000 men under the command of Renzo de Ceri , one of the many wars that broke out between the Duchy of Milan and the French .

 

Modern era

During the Thirty Years' War , in 1636, the French, to prevent navigation between the lake and Milan, set up a ship equipped with four cannons, on which 100 musketeers embarked and placed it in front of Arona. The Spaniards then had some boats armed and, after some fighting, forced the French ship to retreat along the Ticino [10] . With the entire Duchy of Milan it was under Spanish and then Austrian rule . With the Treaty of Worms (1743) it passed into the dominions of the Savoy state , under Charles Emmanuel III .

 

It was taken by the Napoleonic army and the fortress was demolished following the peace agreements with the Austrians in 1801. With the Congress of Vienna in 1815 it was returned to the Savoy family . In 1838 Carlo Alberto of Savoy awarded it the title of city .

 

In 1848 Giuseppe Garibaldi entered the city during the first war of independence , returning in 1859.

 

In 1855 the railway line to Novara was opened and during the 19th century industrial and tourist activities established themselves. At the end of the century it suffered a disastrous lake flood.

 

On 15 September 1943, the roundups of Jews that began in the days preceding Baveno affected the town of Arona, part of that massacre on Lake Maggiore of which in the end there were 57 victims. There were 9 people arrested and killed in Arona by German soldiers, Their bodies were thrown into the lake. The large family of the Milanese industrialist Federico Jarach managed to save themselves by crossing the lake by boat from their villa, because they were notified by telephone just in time.

 

Symbols

Coat of arms

The coat of arms was recognized with DCG of 10 August 1928.

 

«Party of silver and green, the lowered fly and a star divided from the score line of one to the other . Exterior ornaments of the city."

 

The heraldic figure of flight (two spread wings) refers to the toponym Alona documented in ancient manuscripts. The coat of arms is reproduced on the frontispiece of the Statutes of Arona of 1319 although the design is certainly later and features wings and a gold star on a red background.

 

Banner

The banner was granted by royal decree of 7 May 1934.

 

«Dress made of white and green, richly decorated with gold embroidery and bearing the municipal coat of arms with the inscription centered in gold City of Arona .»

 

Flag

The Municipality has adopted a flag consisting of a white and green flag placed in the center of the civic emblem without shield and ornaments.

 

Monuments and places of interest

Piazza del Popolo with the church of Santa Maria di Loreto

Collegiate Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary . The parish church, whose first contract for its construction dates back to 1468, was consecrated, not yet finished, on 12 March 1488. At the beginning of the 17th century Cardinal Federico Borromeo ordered impressive restoration and interior decoration works, upon completion of which, on 10 March 1608, the church was erected as a collegiate church . After the substantial repairs of 1856-1867 it was reconsecrated in 1858 by bishop GF Gentile. It is in Gothic-Byzantine style, altered by later elements. The limestone façade, with a central rose window, has fifteenth-century elements, and a notable bas-relief of the Nativity of the Redeemer, ascribed by Luca Beltrami to the Mantegazza brothers, authors of the lower part of the Certosa di Pavia . Inside you can admire the main altar built in 1812 based on a design by Abbot Zanoia; the Holy Family by Gaudenzio Ferrari in six fields, with the signature Gaudentius Vincius and the date '15', on wood and closed in a carved frame of the time; the Nativity by Andrea Appiani ; the Annunciation and the Marriage by Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone , donated by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Furthermore, four reliquaries are preserved there which contain the pallium, the miter and the crosier of San Carlo Borromeo donated by Cardinal Federico. They were renewed in 1920 by the citizens of Arono in fulfillment of a vow made during the last influenza pandemic, which was considered to have ended through the saint's intercession.

Church of the Holy Martyrs Graziano, Felino, Fedele and Carpoforo (also known as San Graziano). Formerly a Benedictine abbey, the church was annexed to the monastery of the Salvatore and Saints Graziano and Felino, founded in the second half of the 10th century. No traces of the original building remain. Completely rebuilt, it was returned to worship the year following the consecration of the Collegiate Church, 1489. In the church there is an altarpiece of the Madonna Enthroned and Saint by Ambrogio da Fossano, known as Bergognone , hanging behind the main altar. The painting was commissioned by the abbot of the time, Monsignor Girolamo Calagrani, who in the painting appears kneeling in front of the Virgin.

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta) in the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the Broletto and what remains of the ancient port are also located .

Church of the Visitation, annexed to the monastery of the order of the Visitation, was founded in 1652 by the archpriest Graziano Ponzone. On the main altar of the church there is a canvas by the painter Gaudenzio Magistrini (1820-1871).

Beolchi Chapel-Ossuary

Sanctuary of the Sacro Monte of San Carlo

Visitation Monastery

Small church of San Giuseppe , formerly dedicated to Sant'Eusebio

Parish church of San Giusto (in the hamlet of Montrigiasco )

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta)

Church of San Giovanni Battista (in the Dagnente hamlet )

Church of San Giorgio (in Mercurago )

Church of the Holy Trinity

Church of the Sacred Heart

Church of Saints Anna and Gioacchino, in Corso Cavour (built in 1721, with façade rebuilt in 1841; altarpiece by Giuseppe De Albertis, from Arona, with Saints Anna and Gioacchino with the young Mary )

 

Civil and military architecture

Broletto or Palace of Justice, built at the end of the fourteenth century on the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the church of Santa Maria di Loreto also stands. Between the Gothic arches of the portico are terracotta medallions with portraits of the nobles governing the city.

Villa Ponti, which hosted Napoleon Bonaparte on his return from the Egyptian campaign and where classical music concerts and exhibitions of important artists are currently organised.

Villa Leuthold, a nineteenth-century public park, with very large specimens of camellias.

Rocca Borromea , whose ruins are located on the hill above the city. It was historically disputed between the Torriani and Visconti families as well as the birthplace of San Carlo .

Asilo Bottelli , a 19th century building in neoclassical style originally used as a nursery school.

Villa Cantoni , built in the 1880s.

The Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo

 

The same topic in detail: Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo .

This statue, nicknamed the Sancarlone , dominates Lake Maggiore and can be reached by taking the provincial road 35 towards the Ghevio di Meina hamlet , in the San Carlo area. The colossus is approximately 35 meters high (23.40 m for the statue and 11.70 m for the base) and was built between 1614 and 1697 with copper plates . Originally it was planned that the statue, completed in 1698 , would be part of a Sacred Mountain of which, however, only three chapels were built.

 

Society

Demographic evolution

Inhabitants registered

 

Languages ​​and dialects

Even though the city is in Piedmontese territory, the local Verbanese dialect is of the Insubre type ( Western Lombard ).

 

Culture

Museums

The Mineralogical Museum founded in 1983 and located in a nineteenth-century building in Piazza San Graziano.

The Khaled al-Asaad Civic Archaeological Museum .

Libraries

There is the Carlo Torelli Civic Library , founded in 1968

 

Economy

The definitive destruction of the Aronese fortress together with six other citadels in Piedmont was ordered by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 , the day following the victory at Marengo . This meant the possibility of expanding the urban fabric beyond the walls within which it was limited. Thanks to this, large spaces were created on which to build the port, the boatyard and the railway station. Arona's fortune has always been linked to its excellent geographical position, thanks to which it enjoys and has always enjoyed a highly respectable logistical condition.

 

The economy of Arona is mainly based on tourism and trade , although in the area there are some important chemical factories, such as Thurckon Srl, and confectionery, such as the Laica chocolate shop .

 

Infrastructure and transport

The station, under the responsibility of the Lombardy Region, is an important railway hub between the Domodossola-Milan and Arona-Novara lines , and is currently served only by regional trains based on the Service Contract stipulated between Trenitalia/Trenord and the Piedmont and Lombardy Regions. It is also the terminus of the Santhià-Arona railway , which has been replaced by self-service since 17 June 2012.

 

Arona is the headquarters of Navigazione Lago Maggiore.

 

Sports

Twice Arona was the stage arrival site of the Giro d'Italia .

 

1966 14th stage Parma - Arona, won by Franco Bitossi

2001 20th stage Busto Arsizio -Arona, won by Gilberto Simoni

On 24 August 2005 Damiano Cunego won the 8th edition of the Gran Premio Nobili in Arona.

 

The Arona football club is based in the municipality , whose internal field is the Valerio Del Ponte stadium .

 

There is an American football team , the Arona 65ers , Italian champions in 2015 and a basketball team, Arona Basket , which participates in the youth and Serie C championships.

Arona is an Italian municipality of 13,693 inhabitants in the province of Novara , in Piedmont .

 

The sixth municipality in the province by population, it is a tourist - tertiary center on the shores of Lake Maggiore , whose development has been favored by its position on the Via del Sempione and the motorway and railway connection with Milan .

 

In the municipality there is the Lagoni di Mercurago natural park , included among the " prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps ", since 2011 in the UNESCO world heritage list

 

Physical geography

The city of Arona is located on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore and is crossed by the Vevera stream , which flows into the lake here. The hilly bas-reliefs of morainic origin extend all around (called "mottos"), incorporated into the Lagoni di Mercurago Natural Park where, in 1860 , the first pile-dwelling settlement found in Italy was identified . Most of the municipal territory is also hilly, with altitudes that progressively slope down from north to south (and from west to east in the town centre) from 513 m at Motto Mirabello (near the Dagnente hamlet ) up to 195 m on the shore at the lake.

 

The hilly reliefs are generally covered by woods which occupy over half of the Arona area, urbanized areas cover 33% of the surface and meadows or pastures cover 9%; smaller percentages are intended for parks, gardens and green sports areas (2.3%), vegetable gardens, orchards, nurseries and vineyards (1.7%), herbaceous uncultivated areas (1%) and arable land (0.4%).

 

Located in the southernmost part of the lake, Arona is about 37 km from the provincial capital Novara , but only about thirty from Milan-Malpensa airport .

 

History:

From Arona, in Roman times , passed the Via Severiana Augusta , a Roman consular road that connected Mediolanum (modern Milan ) with the Verbannus Lacus (Lake Verbano, or Lake Maggiore ), and from here to the Sempione pass ( lat. Summo Plano ).

 

The first written documentation confirming the existence of a socially organized locality called Arona dates back to 979 : it is a attestation that allows us to identify this date only by induction, so much so that some historians instead maintain that it is 963 .

 

In any case, the presence of man in this southern part of Lake Maggiore is confirmed much further back in time and dates back to prehistory ; in fact, in the Lagoni area, near the hamlet of Mercurago, a pile-dwelling settlement dating back to the Bronze Age (active from the 18th to the 13th century BC ) and, in 1971-1972, a necropolis of the Golasecca civilization from the end of the 6th century were discovered. - early 5th century BC Human traces are also documented in the Motto San Carlo peat bog , in which an arrowhead dating back to the Neolithic and the only object from the Copper Age was found .

 

Of the wooden finds extracted in the 19th century , such as the remains of three wheels that turned idle on a central axis and were equipped with rudimentary non-concentric spokes and those of a pirogue dug into a tree trunk, only the plaster casts remain. They were obtained from footprints in the peat by Bartolomeo Gastaldi , who collected and studied them at the time but was unable to treat them adequately for conservation given the restoration methods of the time so that, preserved for millennia in the particular anaerobic environmental conditions of the peat bog, they crumbled to dehydration shortly after their discovery. The remains of a village were also found whose huts had been built on the edge of a body of water and whose foundations had been preserved thanks to the peat in which they had been planted, as well as various everyday objects in metal or ceramic: jars, vase bottoms, plates, arrows, dagger blades and other defense tools, bronze pins. From the dozen tombs of the 6th century BC come vases of fine workmanship, bracelets, fibulae , rings, bronze belt hooks. The ceramics found in large quantities around the Rocca di Arona testify to a settlement subsequent to that of the Lagoni and have been assigned to the Canegrate , Protogolasecca and Golasecca cultures .

 

The Celt Gauls

The 5th century marks a moment of crisis in the lower Verbano area, and only in the 3rd-2nd century does a conspicuous presence of people reappear, this time Celto-Gallic . A valuable bronze anklet found at the foot of the fortress dates back to the 2nd century BC . It is precisely in this period that the first socially organized residential units were formed. The urbanization of the area is fully justified by the presence of the Rocca di Arona , as opposed to the Rocca di Angera on the Lombard shore of the lake, a position of strategic importance that could not go unnoticed by any local population. In fact, on the fortress there are the remains of a pre-Roman fortification, and three kilometers from Arona, the military campus of Borgo Agnello and Paruzzaro .

 

The Romans and the Middle Ages

In Roman times it was a place of passage towards the Simplon pass . Under the church of San Giuseppe the remains of a furnace and an artisan workshop for metalworking were found . Roman colonization is also documented by funerary tombstones found almost everywhere in the area.

 

The current inhabited center developed around the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore, founded in 979 by Count Amizzone del Seprio. The proof of this development is documented in a "Chronicle" or " Pasionario ", a kind of medley in which lives of more or less reliable saints, texts of asceticism, letters of bishops and prelates , prayers and invocations are intertwined . In this context appears the narrative of the martyrdom of San Graziano and San Felino which occurred in 979 with the translation of their bodies to Arona, by Count Amizzone del Seprio, a troop captain under the command of Emperor Otto I. There are 249 sheets of parchment written in medieval Latin and written in Gothic . Over time, the Benedictine abbey lost its main prerogatives, mainly due to the rise of a civil authority which identified itself first with the Della Torre family , and subsequently, after its demolition, with the Visconti family , first of all Ottone who was archbishop of Milan , around the end of the thirteenth century under which the dominion of the archbishop of Milan passed . In 1263, the Milanese forces, led by the Torriani , besieged Arona by land and water, where the Milanese exiles led by Ottone Visconti had gathered [9] . Between the two hundred and three hundred years old, Stefano Visconti (1287/88 - 1327) appears to have been a Lord, married for the second time in 1318 to Valentina, daughter of Bernabó Doria, Lord of Sassello and Eliana Fieschi of the Lords of Lavagna. Stefano and Valentina had Matteo II, Galeazzo II and Bernabó Visconti, Consignori of Milan from 11 October 1354. Formerly property of the Torriani family ( 12th century ). After the battle of Desio ( 1277 ), it belonged to the family of Ottone Visconti, Visconti and from the third or fourth decade of the 14th century it was a free municipality under the government of the Benedictine abbey.

 

The Renaissance

From 1439 the territory was granted as a fief to the Borromeo family , a lineage of bankers originally from San Miniato in Tuscany . When the Visconti family became extinct with Filippo's daughter Maria Visconti marrying Francesco I in 1441 , the duchy passed to the Sforza family . But this vast territory also had to be defended, and in this sense Vitaliano in 1447 asked Filippo Maria for authorization to fortify the fortress and the village of Arona, granted to him in 1449 with a letter from Filippo Maria which authorized his vassal to create walls, drawbridges, war defense works, and also places for the gathering and custody of ships: first documented military port on Lake Maggiore . The fortress was defended so well that it resisted a siege in 1523 by 7,000 men under the command of Renzo de Ceri , one of the many wars that broke out between the Duchy of Milan and the French .

 

Modern era

During the Thirty Years' War , in 1636, the French, to prevent navigation between the lake and Milan, set up a ship equipped with four cannons, on which 100 musketeers embarked and placed it in front of Arona. The Spaniards then had some boats armed and, after some fighting, forced the French ship to retreat along the Ticino [10] . With the entire Duchy of Milan it was under Spanish and then Austrian rule . With the Treaty of Worms (1743) it passed into the dominions of the Savoy state , under Charles Emmanuel III .

 

It was taken by the Napoleonic army and the fortress was demolished following the peace agreements with the Austrians in 1801. With the Congress of Vienna in 1815 it was returned to the Savoy family . In 1838 Carlo Alberto of Savoy awarded it the title of city .

 

In 1848 Giuseppe Garibaldi entered the city during the first war of independence , returning in 1859.

 

In 1855 the railway line to Novara was opened and during the 19th century industrial and tourist activities established themselves. At the end of the century it suffered a disastrous lake flood.

 

On 15 September 1943, the roundups of Jews that began in the days preceding Baveno affected the town of Arona, part of that massacre on Lake Maggiore of which in the end there were 57 victims. There were 9 people arrested and killed in Arona by German soldiers, Their bodies were thrown into the lake. The large family of the Milanese industrialist Federico Jarach managed to save themselves by crossing the lake by boat from their villa, because they were notified by telephone just in time.

 

Monuments and places of interest

Piazza del Popolo with the church of Santa Maria di Loreto

Collegiate Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary . The parish church, whose first contract for its construction dates back to 1468, was consecrated, not yet finished, on 12 March 1488. At the beginning of the 17th century Cardinal Federico Borromeo ordered impressive restoration and interior decoration works, upon completion of which, on 10 March 1608, the church was erected as a collegiate church . After the substantial repairs of 1856-1867 it was reconsecrated in 1858 by bishop GF Gentile. It is in Gothic-Byzantine style, altered by later elements. The limestone façade, with a central rose window, has fifteenth-century elements, and a notable bas-relief of the Nativity of the Redeemer, ascribed by Luca Beltrami to the Mantegazza brothers, authors of the lower part of the Certosa di Pavia . Inside you can admire the main altar built in 1812 based on a design by Abbot Zanoia; the Holy Family by Gaudenzio Ferrari in six fields, with the signature Gaudentius Vincius and the date '15', on wood and closed in a carved frame of the time; the Nativity by Andrea Appiani ; the Annunciation and the Marriage by Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone , donated by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Furthermore, four reliquaries are preserved there which contain the pallium, the miter and the crosier of San Carlo Borromeo donated by Cardinal Federico. They were renewed in 1920 by the citizens of Arono in fulfillment of a vow made during the last influenza pandemic, which was considered to have ended through the saint's intercession.

Church of the Holy Martyrs Graziano, Felino, Fedele and Carpoforo (also known as San Graziano). Formerly a Benedictine abbey, the church was annexed to the monastery of the Salvatore and Saints Graziano and Felino, founded in the second half of the 10th century. No traces of the original building remain. Completely rebuilt, it was returned to worship the year following the consecration of the Collegiate Church, 1489. In the church there is an altarpiece of the Madonna Enthroned and Saint by Ambrogio da Fossano, known as Bergognone , hanging behind the main altar. The painting was commissioned by the abbot of the time, Monsignor Girolamo Calagrani, who in the painting appears kneeling in front of the Virgin.

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta) in the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the Broletto and what remains of the ancient port are also located .

Church of the Visitation, annexed to the monastery of the order of the Visitation, was founded in 1652 by the archpriest Graziano Ponzone. On the main altar of the church there is a canvas by the painter Gaudenzio Magistrini (1820-1871).

Beolchi Chapel-Ossuary

Sanctuary of the Sacro Monte of San Carlo

Visitation Monastery

Small church of San Giuseppe , formerly dedicated to Sant'Eusebio

Parish church of San Giusto (in the hamlet of Montrigiasco )

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta)

Church of San Giovanni Battista (in the Dagnente hamlet )

Church of San Giorgio (in Mercurago )

Church of the Holy Trinity

Church of the Sacred Heart

Church of Saints Anna and Gioacchino, in Corso Cavour (built in 1721, with façade rebuilt in 1841; altarpiece by Giuseppe De Albertis, from Arona, with Saints Anna and Gioacchino with the young Mary )

 

Civil and military architecture

Broletto or Palace of Justice, built at the end of the fourteenth century on the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the church of Santa Maria di Loreto also stands. Between the Gothic arches of the portico are terracotta medallions with portraits of the nobles governing the city.

Villa Ponti, which hosted Napoleon Bonaparte on his return from the Egyptian campaign and where classical music concerts and exhibitions of important artists are currently organised.

Villa Leuthold, a nineteenth-century public park, with very large specimens of camellias.

Rocca Borromea , whose ruins are located on the hill above the city. It was historically disputed between the Torriani and Visconti families as well as the birthplace of San Carlo .

Asilo Bottelli , a 19th century building in neoclassical style originally used as a nursery school.

Villa Cantoni , built in the 1880s.

 

The Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo

This statue, nicknamed the Sancarlone , dominates Lake Maggiore and can be reached by taking the provincial road 35 towards the Ghevio di Meina hamlet , in the San Carlo area. The colossus is approximately 35 meters high (23.40 m for the statue and 11.70 m for the base) and was built between 1614 and 1697 with copper plates . Originally it was planned that the statue, completed in 1698 , would be part of a Sacred Mountain of which, however, only three chapels were built.

Arona is an Italian municipality of 13,693 inhabitants in the province of Novara , in Piedmont .

 

The sixth municipality in the province by population, it is a tourist - tertiary center on the shores of Lake Maggiore , whose development has been favored by its position on the Via del Sempione and the motorway and railway connection with Milan .

 

In the municipality there is the Lagoni di Mercurago natural park , included among the " prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps ", since 2011 in the UNESCO world heritage list

 

Physical geography

The city of Arona is located on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore and is crossed by the Vevera stream , which flows into the lake here. The hilly bas-reliefs of morainic origin extend all around (called "mottos"), incorporated into the Lagoni di Mercurago Natural Park where, in 1860 , the first pile-dwelling settlement found in Italy was identified . Most of the municipal territory is also hilly, with altitudes that progressively slope down from north to south (and from west to east in the town centre) from 513 m at Motto Mirabello (near the Dagnente hamlet ) up to 195 m on the shore at the lake.

 

The hilly reliefs are generally covered by woods which occupy over half of the Arona area, urbanized areas cover 33% of the surface and meadows or pastures cover 9%; smaller percentages are intended for parks, gardens and green sports areas (2.3%), vegetable gardens, orchards, nurseries and vineyards (1.7%), herbaceous uncultivated areas (1%) and arable land (0.4%).

 

Located in the southernmost part of the lake, Arona is about 37 km from the provincial capital Novara , but only about thirty from Milan-Malpensa airport .

 

History:

From Arona, in Roman times , passed the Via Severiana Augusta , a Roman consular road that connected Mediolanum (modern Milan ) with the Verbannus Lacus (Lake Verbano, or Lake Maggiore ), and from here to the Sempione pass ( lat. Summo Plano ).

 

The first written documentation confirming the existence of a socially organized locality called Arona dates back to 979 : it is a attestation that allows us to identify this date only by induction, so much so that some historians instead maintain that it is 963 .

 

In any case, the presence of man in this southern part of Lake Maggiore is confirmed much further back in time and dates back to prehistory ; in fact, in the Lagoni area, near the hamlet of Mercurago, a pile-dwelling settlement dating back to the Bronze Age (active from the 18th to the 13th century BC ) and, in 1971-1972, a necropolis of the Golasecca civilization from the end of the 6th century were discovered. - early 5th century BC Human traces are also documented in the Motto San Carlo peat bog , in which an arrowhead dating back to the Neolithic and the only object from the Copper Age was found .

 

Of the wooden finds extracted in the 19th century , such as the remains of three wheels that turned idle on a central axis and were equipped with rudimentary non-concentric spokes and those of a pirogue dug into a tree trunk, only the plaster casts remain. They were obtained from footprints in the peat by Bartolomeo Gastaldi , who collected and studied them at the time but was unable to treat them adequately for conservation given the restoration methods of the time so that, preserved for millennia in the particular anaerobic environmental conditions of the peat bog, they crumbled to dehydration shortly after their discovery. The remains of a village were also found whose huts had been built on the edge of a body of water and whose foundations had been preserved thanks to the peat in which they had been planted, as well as various everyday objects in metal or ceramic: jars, vase bottoms, plates, arrows, dagger blades and other defense tools, bronze pins. From the dozen tombs of the 6th century BC come vases of fine workmanship, bracelets, fibulae , rings, bronze belt hooks. The ceramics found in large quantities around the Rocca di Arona testify to a settlement subsequent to that of the Lagoni and have been assigned to the Canegrate , Protogolasecca and Golasecca cultures .

 

The Celt Gauls

The 5th century marks a moment of crisis in the lower Verbano area, and only in the 3rd-2nd century does a conspicuous presence of people reappear, this time Celto-Gallic . A valuable bronze anklet found at the foot of the fortress dates back to the 2nd century BC . It is precisely in this period that the first socially organized residential units were formed. The urbanization of the area is fully justified by the presence of the Rocca di Arona , as opposed to the Rocca di Angera on the Lombard shore of the lake, a position of strategic importance that could not go unnoticed by any local population. In fact, on the fortress there are the remains of a pre-Roman fortification, and three kilometers from Arona, the military campus of Borgo Agnello and Paruzzaro .

 

The Romans and the Middle Ages

In Roman times it was a place of passage towards the Simplon pass . Under the church of San Giuseppe the remains of a furnace and an artisan workshop for metalworking were found . Roman colonization is also documented by funerary tombstones found almost everywhere in the area.

 

The current inhabited center developed around the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore, founded in 979 by Count Amizzone del Seprio. The proof of this development is documented in a "Chronicle" or " Pasionario ", a kind of medley in which lives of more or less reliable saints, texts of asceticism, letters of bishops and prelates , prayers and invocations are intertwined . In this context appears the narrative of the martyrdom of San Graziano and San Felino which occurred in 979 with the translation of their bodies to Arona, by Count Amizzone del Seprio, a troop captain under the command of Emperor Otto I. There are 249 sheets of parchment written in medieval Latin and written in Gothic . Over time, the Benedictine abbey lost its main prerogatives, mainly due to the rise of a civil authority which identified itself first with the Della Torre family , and subsequently, after its demolition, with the Visconti family , first of all Ottone who was archbishop of Milan , around the end of the thirteenth century under which the dominion of the archbishop of Milan passed . In 1263, the Milanese forces, led by the Torriani , besieged Arona by land and water, where the Milanese exiles led by Ottone Visconti had gathered [9] . Between the two hundred and three hundred years old, Stefano Visconti (1287/88 - 1327) appears to have been a Lord, married for the second time in 1318 to Valentina, daughter of Bernabó Doria, Lord of Sassello and Eliana Fieschi of the Lords of Lavagna. Stefano and Valentina had Matteo II, Galeazzo II and Bernabó Visconti, Consignori of Milan from 11 October 1354. Formerly property of the Torriani family ( 12th century ). After the battle of Desio ( 1277 ), it belonged to the family of Ottone Visconti, Visconti and from the third or fourth decade of the 14th century it was a free municipality under the government of the Benedictine abbey.

 

The Renaissance

From 1439 the territory was granted as a fief to the Borromeo family , a lineage of bankers originally from San Miniato in Tuscany . When the Visconti family became extinct with Filippo's daughter Maria Visconti marrying Francesco I in 1441 , the duchy passed to the Sforza family . But this vast territory also had to be defended, and in this sense Vitaliano in 1447 asked Filippo Maria for authorization to fortify the fortress and the village of Arona, granted to him in 1449 with a letter from Filippo Maria which authorized his vassal to create walls, drawbridges, war defense works, and also places for the gathering and custody of ships: first documented military port on Lake Maggiore . The fortress was defended so well that it resisted a siege in 1523 by 7,000 men under the command of Renzo de Ceri , one of the many wars that broke out between the Duchy of Milan and the French .

 

Modern era

During the Thirty Years' War , in 1636, the French, to prevent navigation between the lake and Milan, set up a ship equipped with four cannons, on which 100 musketeers embarked and placed it in front of Arona. The Spaniards then had some boats armed and, after some fighting, forced the French ship to retreat along the Ticino [10] . With the entire Duchy of Milan it was under Spanish and then Austrian rule . With the Treaty of Worms (1743) it passed into the dominions of the Savoy state , under Charles Emmanuel III .

 

It was taken by the Napoleonic army and the fortress was demolished following the peace agreements with the Austrians in 1801. With the Congress of Vienna in 1815 it was returned to the Savoy family . In 1838 Carlo Alberto of Savoy awarded it the title of city .

 

In 1848 Giuseppe Garibaldi entered the city during the first war of independence , returning in 1859.

 

In 1855 the railway line to Novara was opened and during the 19th century industrial and tourist activities established themselves. At the end of the century it suffered a disastrous lake flood.

 

On 15 September 1943, the roundups of Jews that began in the days preceding Baveno affected the town of Arona, part of that massacre on Lake Maggiore of which in the end there were 57 victims. There were 9 people arrested and killed in Arona by German soldiers, Their bodies were thrown into the lake. The large family of the Milanese industrialist Federico Jarach managed to save themselves by crossing the lake by boat from their villa, because they were notified by telephone just in time.

 

Monuments and places of interest

Piazza del Popolo with the church of Santa Maria di Loreto

Collegiate Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary . The parish church, whose first contract for its construction dates back to 1468, was consecrated, not yet finished, on 12 March 1488. At the beginning of the 17th century Cardinal Federico Borromeo ordered impressive restoration and interior decoration works, upon completion of which, on 10 March 1608, the church was erected as a collegiate church . After the substantial repairs of 1856-1867 it was reconsecrated in 1858 by bishop GF Gentile. It is in Gothic-Byzantine style, altered by later elements. The limestone façade, with a central rose window, has fifteenth-century elements, and a notable bas-relief of the Nativity of the Redeemer, ascribed by Luca Beltrami to the Mantegazza brothers, authors of the lower part of the Certosa di Pavia . Inside you can admire the main altar built in 1812 based on a design by Abbot Zanoia; the Holy Family by Gaudenzio Ferrari in six fields, with the signature Gaudentius Vincius and the date '15', on wood and closed in a carved frame of the time; the Nativity by Andrea Appiani ; the Annunciation and the Marriage by Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone , donated by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Furthermore, four reliquaries are preserved there which contain the pallium, the miter and the crosier of San Carlo Borromeo donated by Cardinal Federico. They were renewed in 1920 by the citizens of Arono in fulfillment of a vow made during the last influenza pandemic, which was considered to have ended through the saint's intercession.

Church of the Holy Martyrs Graziano, Felino, Fedele and Carpoforo (also known as San Graziano). Formerly a Benedictine abbey, the church was annexed to the monastery of the Salvatore and Saints Graziano and Felino, founded in the second half of the 10th century. No traces of the original building remain. Completely rebuilt, it was returned to worship the year following the consecration of the Collegiate Church, 1489. In the church there is an altarpiece of the Madonna Enthroned and Saint by Ambrogio da Fossano, known as Bergognone , hanging behind the main altar. The painting was commissioned by the abbot of the time, Monsignor Girolamo Calagrani, who in the painting appears kneeling in front of the Virgin.

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta) in the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the Broletto and what remains of the ancient port are also located .

Church of the Visitation, annexed to the monastery of the order of the Visitation, was founded in 1652 by the archpriest Graziano Ponzone. On the main altar of the church there is a canvas by the painter Gaudenzio Magistrini (1820-1871).

Beolchi Chapel-Ossuary

Sanctuary of the Sacro Monte of San Carlo

Visitation Monastery

Small church of San Giuseppe , formerly dedicated to Sant'Eusebio

Parish church of San Giusto (in the hamlet of Montrigiasco )

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta)

Church of San Giovanni Battista (in the Dagnente hamlet )

Church of San Giorgio (in Mercurago )

Church of the Holy Trinity

Church of the Sacred Heart

Church of Saints Anna and Gioacchino, in Corso Cavour (built in 1721, with façade rebuilt in 1841; altarpiece by Giuseppe De Albertis, from Arona, with Saints Anna and Gioacchino with the young Mary )

 

Civil and military architecture

Broletto or Palace of Justice, built at the end of the fourteenth century on the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the church of Santa Maria di Loreto also stands. Between the Gothic arches of the portico are terracotta medallions with portraits of the nobles governing the city.

Villa Ponti, which hosted Napoleon Bonaparte on his return from the Egyptian campaign and where classical music concerts and exhibitions of important artists are currently organised.

Villa Leuthold, a nineteenth-century public park, with very large specimens of camellias.

Rocca Borromea , whose ruins are located on the hill above the city. It was historically disputed between the Torriani and Visconti families as well as the birthplace of San Carlo .

Asilo Bottelli , a 19th century building in neoclassical style originally used as a nursery school.

Villa Cantoni , built in the 1880s.

 

The Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo

This statue, nicknamed the Sancarlone , dominates Lake Maggiore and can be reached by taking the provincial road 35 towards the Ghevio di Meina hamlet , in the San Carlo area. The colossus is approximately 35 meters high (23.40 m for the statue and 11.70 m for the base) and was built between 1614 and 1697 with copper plates . Originally it was planned that the statue, completed in 1698 , would be part of a Sacred Mountain of which, however, only three chapels were built.

Vista dalla terrazza del ristorante/bar Belvedere

Arona is an Italian municipality of 13,693 inhabitants in the province of Novara , in Piedmont .

 

The sixth municipality in the province by population, it is a tourist - tertiary center on the shores of Lake Maggiore , whose development has been favored by its position on the Via del Sempione and the motorway and railway connection with Milan .

 

In the municipality there is the Lagoni di Mercurago natural park , included among the " prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps ", since 2011 in the UNESCO world heritage list

 

Physical geography

The city of Arona is located on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore and is crossed by the Vevera stream , which flows into the lake here. The hilly bas-reliefs of morainic origin extend all around (called "mottos"), incorporated into the Lagoni di Mercurago Natural Park where, in 1860 , the first pile-dwelling settlement found in Italy was identified . Most of the municipal territory is also hilly, with altitudes that progressively slope down from north to south (and from west to east in the town centre) from 513 m at Motto Mirabello (near the Dagnente hamlet ) up to 195 m on the shore at the lake.

 

The hilly reliefs are generally covered by woods which occupy over half of the Arona area, urbanized areas cover 33% of the surface and meadows or pastures cover 9%; smaller percentages are intended for parks, gardens and green sports areas (2.3%), vegetable gardens, orchards, nurseries and vineyards (1.7%), herbaceous uncultivated areas (1%) and arable land (0.4%).

 

Located in the southernmost part of the lake, Arona is about 37 km from the provincial capital Novara , but only about thirty from Milan-Malpensa airport .

 

History:

From Arona, in Roman times , passed the Via Severiana Augusta , a Roman consular road that connected Mediolanum (modern Milan ) with the Verbannus Lacus (Lake Verbano, or Lake Maggiore ), and from here to the Sempione pass ( lat. Summo Plano ).

 

The first written documentation confirming the existence of a socially organized locality called Arona dates back to 979 : it is a attestation that allows us to identify this date only by induction, so much so that some historians instead maintain that it is 963 .

 

In any case, the presence of man in this southern part of Lake Maggiore is confirmed much further back in time and dates back to prehistory ; in fact, in the Lagoni area, near the hamlet of Mercurago, a pile-dwelling settlement dating back to the Bronze Age (active from the 18th to the 13th century BC ) and, in 1971-1972, a necropolis of the Golasecca civilization from the end of the 6th century were discovered. - early 5th century BC Human traces are also documented in the Motto San Carlo peat bog , in which an arrowhead dating back to the Neolithic and the only object from the Copper Age was found .

 

Of the wooden finds extracted in the 19th century , such as the remains of three wheels that turned idle on a central axis and were equipped with rudimentary non-concentric spokes and those of a pirogue dug into a tree trunk, only the plaster casts remain. They were obtained from footprints in the peat by Bartolomeo Gastaldi , who collected and studied them at the time but was unable to treat them adequately for conservation given the restoration methods of the time so that, preserved for millennia in the particular anaerobic environmental conditions of the peat bog, they crumbled to dehydration shortly after their discovery. The remains of a village were also found whose huts had been built on the edge of a body of water and whose foundations had been preserved thanks to the peat in which they had been planted, as well as various everyday objects in metal or ceramic: jars, vase bottoms, plates, arrows, dagger blades and other defense tools, bronze pins. From the dozen tombs of the 6th century BC come vases of fine workmanship, bracelets, fibulae , rings, bronze belt hooks. The ceramics found in large quantities around the Rocca di Arona testify to a settlement subsequent to that of the Lagoni and have been assigned to the Canegrate , Protogolasecca and Golasecca cultures .

 

The Celt Gauls

The 5th century marks a moment of crisis in the lower Verbano area, and only in the 3rd-2nd century does a conspicuous presence of people reappear, this time Celto-Gallic . A valuable bronze anklet found at the foot of the fortress dates back to the 2nd century BC . It is precisely in this period that the first socially organized residential units were formed. The urbanization of the area is fully justified by the presence of the Rocca di Arona , as opposed to the Rocca di Angera on the Lombard shore of the lake, a position of strategic importance that could not go unnoticed by any local population. In fact, on the fortress there are the remains of a pre-Roman fortification, and three kilometers from Arona, the military campus of Borgo Agnello and Paruzzaro .

 

The Romans and the Middle Ages

In Roman times it was a place of passage towards the Simplon pass . Under the church of San Giuseppe the remains of a furnace and an artisan workshop for metalworking were found . Roman colonization is also documented by funerary tombstones found almost everywhere in the area.

 

The current inhabited center developed around the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore, founded in 979 by Count Amizzone del Seprio. The proof of this development is documented in a "Chronicle" or " Pasionario ", a kind of medley in which lives of more or less reliable saints, texts of asceticism, letters of bishops and prelates , prayers and invocations are intertwined . In this context appears the narrative of the martyrdom of San Graziano and San Felino which occurred in 979 with the translation of their bodies to Arona, by Count Amizzone del Seprio, a troop captain under the command of Emperor Otto I. There are 249 sheets of parchment written in medieval Latin and written in Gothic . Over time, the Benedictine abbey lost its main prerogatives, mainly due to the rise of a civil authority which identified itself first with the Della Torre family , and subsequently, after its demolition, with the Visconti family , first of all Ottone who was archbishop of Milan , around the end of the thirteenth century under which the dominion of the archbishop of Milan passed . In 1263, the Milanese forces, led by the Torriani , besieged Arona by land and water, where the Milanese exiles led by Ottone Visconti had gathered [9] . Between the two hundred and three hundred years old, Stefano Visconti (1287/88 - 1327) appears to have been a Lord, married for the second time in 1318 to Valentina, daughter of Bernabó Doria, Lord of Sassello and Eliana Fieschi of the Lords of Lavagna. Stefano and Valentina had Matteo II, Galeazzo II and Bernabó Visconti, Consignori of Milan from 11 October 1354. Formerly property of the Torriani family ( 12th century ). After the battle of Desio ( 1277 ), it belonged to the family of Ottone Visconti, Visconti and from the third or fourth decade of the 14th century it was a free municipality under the government of the Benedictine abbey.

 

The Renaissance

From 1439 the territory was granted as a fief to the Borromeo family , a lineage of bankers originally from San Miniato in Tuscany . When the Visconti family became extinct with Filippo's daughter Maria Visconti marrying Francesco I in 1441 , the duchy passed to the Sforza family . But this vast territory also had to be defended, and in this sense Vitaliano in 1447 asked Filippo Maria for authorization to fortify the fortress and the village of Arona, granted to him in 1449 with a letter from Filippo Maria which authorized his vassal to create walls, drawbridges, war defense works, and also places for the gathering and custody of ships: first documented military port on Lake Maggiore . The fortress was defended so well that it resisted a siege in 1523 by 7,000 men under the command of Renzo de Ceri , one of the many wars that broke out between the Duchy of Milan and the French .

 

Modern era

During the Thirty Years' War , in 1636, the French, to prevent navigation between the lake and Milan, set up a ship equipped with four cannons, on which 100 musketeers embarked and placed it in front of Arona. The Spaniards then had some boats armed and, after some fighting, forced the French ship to retreat along the Ticino [10] . With the entire Duchy of Milan it was under Spanish and then Austrian rule . With the Treaty of Worms (1743) it passed into the dominions of the Savoy state , under Charles Emmanuel III .

 

It was taken by the Napoleonic army and the fortress was demolished following the peace agreements with the Austrians in 1801. With the Congress of Vienna in 1815 it was returned to the Savoy family . In 1838 Carlo Alberto of Savoy awarded it the title of city .

 

In 1848 Giuseppe Garibaldi entered the city during the first war of independence , returning in 1859.

 

In 1855 the railway line to Novara was opened and during the 19th century industrial and tourist activities established themselves. At the end of the century it suffered a disastrous lake flood.

 

On 15 September 1943, the roundups of Jews that began in the days preceding Baveno affected the town of Arona, part of that massacre on Lake Maggiore of which in the end there were 57 victims. There were 9 people arrested and killed in Arona by German soldiers, Their bodies were thrown into the lake. The large family of the Milanese industrialist Federico Jarach managed to save themselves by crossing the lake by boat from their villa, because they were notified by telephone just in time.

 

Monuments and places of interest

Piazza del Popolo with the church of Santa Maria di Loreto

Collegiate Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary . The parish church, whose first contract for its construction dates back to 1468, was consecrated, not yet finished, on 12 March 1488. At the beginning of the 17th century Cardinal Federico Borromeo ordered impressive restoration and interior decoration works, upon completion of which, on 10 March 1608, the church was erected as a collegiate church . After the substantial repairs of 1856-1867 it was reconsecrated in 1858 by bishop GF Gentile. It is in Gothic-Byzantine style, altered by later elements. The limestone façade, with a central rose window, has fifteenth-century elements, and a notable bas-relief of the Nativity of the Redeemer, ascribed by Luca Beltrami to the Mantegazza brothers, authors of the lower part of the Certosa di Pavia . Inside you can admire the main altar built in 1812 based on a design by Abbot Zanoia; the Holy Family by Gaudenzio Ferrari in six fields, with the signature Gaudentius Vincius and the date '15', on wood and closed in a carved frame of the time; the Nativity by Andrea Appiani ; the Annunciation and the Marriage by Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone , donated by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Furthermore, four reliquaries are preserved there which contain the pallium, the miter and the crosier of San Carlo Borromeo donated by Cardinal Federico. They were renewed in 1920 by the citizens of Arono in fulfillment of a vow made during the last influenza pandemic, which was considered to have ended through the saint's intercession.

Church of the Holy Martyrs Graziano, Felino, Fedele and Carpoforo (also known as San Graziano). Formerly a Benedictine abbey, the church was annexed to the monastery of the Salvatore and Saints Graziano and Felino, founded in the second half of the 10th century. No traces of the original building remain. Completely rebuilt, it was returned to worship the year following the consecration of the Collegiate Church, 1489. In the church there is an altarpiece of the Madonna Enthroned and Saint by Ambrogio da Fossano, known as Bergognone , hanging behind the main altar. The painting was commissioned by the abbot of the time, Monsignor Girolamo Calagrani, who in the painting appears kneeling in front of the Virgin.

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta) in the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the Broletto and what remains of the ancient port are also located .

Church of the Visitation, annexed to the monastery of the order of the Visitation, was founded in 1652 by the archpriest Graziano Ponzone. On the main altar of the church there is a canvas by the painter Gaudenzio Magistrini (1820-1871).

Beolchi Chapel-Ossuary

Sanctuary of the Sacro Monte of San Carlo

Visitation Monastery

Small church of San Giuseppe , formerly dedicated to Sant'Eusebio

Parish church of San Giusto (in the hamlet of Montrigiasco )

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta)

Church of San Giovanni Battista (in the Dagnente hamlet )

Church of San Giorgio (in Mercurago )

Church of the Holy Trinity

Church of the Sacred Heart

Church of Saints Anna and Gioacchino, in Corso Cavour (built in 1721, with façade rebuilt in 1841; altarpiece by Giuseppe De Albertis, from Arona, with Saints Anna and Gioacchino with the young Mary )

 

Civil and military architecture

Broletto or Palace of Justice, built at the end of the fourteenth century on the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the church of Santa Maria di Loreto also stands. Between the Gothic arches of the portico are terracotta medallions with portraits of the nobles governing the city.

Villa Ponti, which hosted Napoleon Bonaparte on his return from the Egyptian campaign and where classical music concerts and exhibitions of important artists are currently organised.

Villa Leuthold, a nineteenth-century public park, with very large specimens of camellias.

Rocca Borromea , whose ruins are located on the hill above the city. It was historically disputed between the Torriani and Visconti families as well as the birthplace of San Carlo .

Asilo Bottelli , a 19th century building in neoclassical style originally used as a nursery school.

Villa Cantoni , built in the 1880s.

 

The Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo

This statue, nicknamed the Sancarlone , dominates Lake Maggiore and can be reached by taking the provincial road 35 towards the Ghevio di Meina hamlet , in the San Carlo area. The colossus is approximately 35 meters high (23.40 m for the statue and 11.70 m for the base) and was built between 1614 and 1697 with copper plates . Originally it was planned that the statue, completed in 1698 , would be part of a Sacred Mountain of which, however, only three chapels were built.

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), was presented to the United States by the people of France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island (part of New York but physically on the New Jersey side of the New York Harbor) as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to the U.S. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

The statue is of a robed woman holding a lit flame, and is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf (originally made of stained glass and lit from the inside.) It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 ft (46 m) tall, but with the pedestal and foundation, it is 305 ft (93 m) tall.

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

The statue is a central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, administered by the National Park Service.

Liberty Enlightening the World (La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty, is a statue given to the United States by France in 1885, standing at Liberty Island in the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship between the two nations. The sculptor was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the Repoussé technique. The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the U.S. worldwide,[1] and, in a more general sense, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the Jet age, often the first glimpse of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. In terms of visual impact, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

Arona, Aruna in Novara dialect , Aron-a in Piedmontese) is an Italian municipality of 13,693 inhabitants in the province of Novara , in Piedmont .

 

The sixth municipality in the province by population, it is a tourist - tertiary center on the shores of Lake Maggiore , whose development has been favored by its position on the Via del Sempione and the motorway and railway connection with Milan .

 

In the municipality there is the Lagoni di Mercurago natural park , included among the " prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps ", since 2011 in the UNESCO world heritage list

 

Physical geography

The city of Arona is located on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore and is crossed by the Vevera stream , which flows into the lake here. The hilly bas-reliefs of morainic origin extend all around (called "mottos"), incorporated into the Lagoni di Mercurago Natural Park where, in 1860 , the first pile-dwelling settlement found in Italy was identified . Most of the municipal territory is also hilly, with altitudes that progressively slope down from north to south (and from west to east in the town centre) from 513 m at Motto Mirabello (near the Dagnente hamlet ) up to 195 m on the shore at the lake.

 

The hilly reliefs are generally covered by woods which occupy over half of the Arona area, urbanized areas cover 33% of the surface and meadows or pastures cover 9%; smaller percentages are intended for parks, gardens and green sports areas (2.3%), vegetable gardens, orchards, nurseries and vineyards (1.7%), herbaceous uncultivated areas (1%) and arable land (0.4%).

 

Located in the southernmost part of the lake, Arona is about 37 km from the provincial capital Novara , but only about thirty from Milan-Malpensa airport .

 

Origins of the name

The toponym could derive from the Celtic roots art (mountain) and on (water), with the meaning of "mountain on the water" [ without source ] .

 

History

Origins

From Arona, in Roman times , passed the Via Severiana Augusta , a Roman consular road that connected Mediolanum (modern Milan ) with the Verbannus Lacus (Lake Verbano, or Lake Maggiore ), and from here to the Sempione pass ( lat. Summo Plano ).

 

The first written documentation confirming the existence of a socially organized locality called Arona dates back to 979 : it is a attestation that allows us to identify this date only by induction, so much so that some historians instead maintain that it is 963 .

 

In any case, the presence of man in this southern part of Lake Maggiore is confirmed much further back in time and dates back to prehistory ; in fact, in the Lagoni area, near the hamlet of Mercurago, a pile-dwelling settlement dating back to the Bronze Age (active from the 18th to the 13th century BC ) and, in 1971-1972, a necropolis of the Golasecca civilization from the end of the 6th century were discovered. - early 5th century BC Human traces are also documented in the Motto San Carlo peat bog , in which an arrowhead dating back to the Neolithic and the only object from the Copper Age was found .

 

Of the wooden finds extracted in the 19th century , such as the remains of three wheels that turned idle on a central axis and were equipped with rudimentary non-concentric spokes and those of a pirogue dug into a tree trunk, only the plaster casts remain. They were obtained from footprints in the peat by Bartolomeo Gastaldi , who collected and studied them at the time but was unable to treat them adequately for conservation given the restoration methods of the time so that, preserved for millennia in the particular anaerobic environmental conditions of the peat bog, they crumbled to dehydration shortly after their discovery. The remains of a village were also found whose huts had been built on the edge of a body of water and whose foundations had been preserved thanks to the peat in which they had been planted, as well as various everyday objects in metal or ceramic: jars, vase bottoms, plates, arrows, dagger blades and other defense tools, bronze pins. From the dozen tombs of the 6th century BC come vases of fine workmanship, bracelets, fibulae , rings, bronze belt hooks. The ceramics found in large quantities around the Rocca di Arona testify to a settlement subsequent to that of the Lagoni and have been assigned to the Canegrate , Protogolasecca and Golasecca cultures .

 

The Celt Gauls

The 5th century marks a moment of crisis in the lower Verbano area, and only in the 3rd-2nd century does a conspicuous presence of people reappear, this time Celto-Gallic . A valuable bronze anklet found at the foot of the fortress dates back to the 2nd century BC . It is precisely in this period that the first socially organized residential units were formed. The urbanization of the area is fully justified by the presence of the Rocca di Arona , as opposed to the Rocca di Angera on the Lombard shore of the lake, a position of strategic importance that could not go unnoticed by any local population. In fact, on the fortress there are the remains of a pre-Roman fortification, and three kilometers from Arona, the military campus of Borgo Agnello and Paruzzaro .

 

The Romans and the Middle Ages

In Roman times it was a place of passage towards the Simplon pass . Under the church of San Giuseppe the remains of a furnace and an artisan workshop for metalworking were found . Roman colonization is also documented by funerary tombstones found almost everywhere in the area.

 

The current inhabited center developed around the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore, founded in 979 by Count Amizzone del Seprio. The proof of this development is documented in a "Chronicle" or " Pasionario ", a kind of medley in which lives of more or less reliable saints, texts of asceticism, letters of bishops and prelates , prayers and invocations are intertwined . In this context appears the narrative of the martyrdom of San Graziano and San Felino which occurred in 979 with the translation of their bodies to Arona, by Count Amizzone del Seprio, a troop captain under the command of Emperor Otto I. There are 249 sheets of parchment written in medieval Latin and written in Gothic . Over time, the Benedictine abbey lost its main prerogatives, mainly due to the rise of a civil authority which identified itself first with the Della Torre family , and subsequently, after its demolition, with the Visconti family , first of all Ottone who was archbishop of Milan , around the end of the thirteenth century under which the dominion of the archbishop of Milan passed . In 1263, the Milanese forces, led by the Torriani , besieged Arona by land and water, where the Milanese exiles led by Ottone Visconti had gathered [9] . Between the two hundred and three hundred years old, Stefano Visconti (1287/88 - 1327) appears to have been a Lord, married for the second time in 1318 to Valentina, daughter of Bernabó Doria, Lord of Sassello and Eliana Fieschi of the Lords of Lavagna. Stefano and Valentina had Matteo II, Galeazzo II and Bernabó Visconti, Consignori of Milan from 11 October 1354. Formerly property of the Torriani family ( 12th century ). After the battle of Desio ( 1277 ), it belonged to the family of Ottone Visconti, Visconti and from the third or fourth decade of the 14th century it was a free municipality under the government of the Benedictine abbey.

 

The Renaissance

From 1439 the territory was granted as a fief to the Borromeo family , a lineage of bankers originally from San Miniato in Tuscany . When the Visconti family became extinct with Filippo's daughter Maria Visconti marrying Francesco I in 1441 , the duchy passed to the Sforza family . But this vast territory also had to be defended, and in this sense Vitaliano in 1447 asked Filippo Maria for authorization to fortify the fortress and the village of Arona, granted to him in 1449 with a letter from Filippo Maria which authorized his vassal to create walls, drawbridges, war defense works, and also places for the gathering and custody of ships: first documented military port on Lake Maggiore . The fortress was defended so well that it resisted a siege in 1523 by 7,000 men under the command of Renzo de Ceri , one of the many wars that broke out between the Duchy of Milan and the French .

 

Modern era

During the Thirty Years' War , in 1636, the French, to prevent navigation between the lake and Milan, set up a ship equipped with four cannons, on which 100 musketeers embarked and placed it in front of Arona. The Spaniards then had some boats armed and, after some fighting, forced the French ship to retreat along the Ticino [10] . With the entire Duchy of Milan it was under Spanish and then Austrian rule . With the Treaty of Worms (1743) it passed into the dominions of the Savoy state , under Charles Emmanuel III .

 

It was taken by the Napoleonic army and the fortress was demolished following the peace agreements with the Austrians in 1801. With the Congress of Vienna in 1815 it was returned to the Savoy family . In 1838 Carlo Alberto of Savoy awarded it the title of city .

 

In 1848 Giuseppe Garibaldi entered the city during the first war of independence , returning in 1859.

 

In 1855 the railway line to Novara was opened and during the 19th century industrial and tourist activities established themselves. At the end of the century it suffered a disastrous lake flood.

 

On 15 September 1943, the roundups of Jews that began in the days preceding Baveno affected the town of Arona, part of that massacre on Lake Maggiore of which in the end there were 57 victims. There were 9 people arrested and killed in Arona by German soldiers, Their bodies were thrown into the lake. The large family of the Milanese industrialist Federico Jarach managed to save themselves by crossing the lake by boat from their villa, because they were notified by telephone just in time.

 

Symbols

Coat of arms

The coat of arms was recognized with DCG of 10 August 1928.

 

«Party of silver and green, the lowered fly and a star divided from the score line of one to the other . Exterior ornaments of the city."

 

The heraldic figure of flight (two spread wings) refers to the toponym Alona documented in ancient manuscripts. The coat of arms is reproduced on the frontispiece of the Statutes of Arona of 1319 although the design is certainly later and features wings and a gold star on a red background.

 

Banner

The banner was granted by royal decree of 7 May 1934.

 

«Dress made of white and green, richly decorated with gold embroidery and bearing the municipal coat of arms with the inscription centered in gold City of Arona .»

 

Flag

The Municipality has adopted a flag consisting of a white and green flag placed in the center of the civic emblem without shield and ornaments.

 

Monuments and places of interest

Piazza del Popolo with the church of Santa Maria di Loreto

Collegiate Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary . The parish church, whose first contract for its construction dates back to 1468, was consecrated, not yet finished, on 12 March 1488. At the beginning of the 17th century Cardinal Federico Borromeo ordered impressive restoration and interior decoration works, upon completion of which, on 10 March 1608, the church was erected as a collegiate church . After the substantial repairs of 1856-1867 it was reconsecrated in 1858 by bishop GF Gentile. It is in Gothic-Byzantine style, altered by later elements. The limestone façade, with a central rose window, has fifteenth-century elements, and a notable bas-relief of the Nativity of the Redeemer, ascribed by Luca Beltrami to the Mantegazza brothers, authors of the lower part of the Certosa di Pavia . Inside you can admire the main altar built in 1812 based on a design by Abbot Zanoia; the Holy Family by Gaudenzio Ferrari in six fields, with the signature Gaudentius Vincius and the date '15', on wood and closed in a carved frame of the time; the Nativity by Andrea Appiani ; the Annunciation and the Marriage by Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone , donated by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Furthermore, four reliquaries are preserved there which contain the pallium, the miter and the crosier of San Carlo Borromeo donated by Cardinal Federico. They were renewed in 1920 by the citizens of Arono in fulfillment of a vow made during the last influenza pandemic, which was considered to have ended through the saint's intercession.

Church of the Holy Martyrs Graziano, Felino, Fedele and Carpoforo (also known as San Graziano). Formerly a Benedictine abbey, the church was annexed to the monastery of the Salvatore and Saints Graziano and Felino, founded in the second half of the 10th century. No traces of the original building remain. Completely rebuilt, it was returned to worship the year following the consecration of the Collegiate Church, 1489. In the church there is an altarpiece of the Madonna Enthroned and Saint by Ambrogio da Fossano, known as Bergognone , hanging behind the main altar. The painting was commissioned by the abbot of the time, Monsignor Girolamo Calagrani, who in the painting appears kneeling in front of the Virgin.

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta) in the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the Broletto and what remains of the ancient port are also located .

Church of the Visitation, annexed to the monastery of the order of the Visitation, was founded in 1652 by the archpriest Graziano Ponzone. On the main altar of the church there is a canvas by the painter Gaudenzio Magistrini (1820-1871).

Beolchi Chapel-Ossuary

Sanctuary of the Sacro Monte of San Carlo

Visitation Monastery

Small church of San Giuseppe , formerly dedicated to Sant'Eusebio

Parish church of San Giusto (in the hamlet of Montrigiasco )

Church of Santa Maria di Loreto (also called Santa Marta)

Church of San Giovanni Battista (in the Dagnente hamlet )

Church of San Giorgio (in Mercurago )

Church of the Holy Trinity

Church of the Sacred Heart

Church of Saints Anna and Gioacchino, in Corso Cavour (built in 1721, with façade rebuilt in 1841; altarpiece by Giuseppe De Albertis, from Arona, with Saints Anna and Gioacchino with the young Mary )

 

Civil and military architecture

Broletto or Palace of Justice, built at the end of the fourteenth century on the ancient Piazza del Popolo, where the church of Santa Maria di Loreto also stands. Between the Gothic arches of the portico are terracotta medallions with portraits of the nobles governing the city.

Villa Ponti, which hosted Napoleon Bonaparte on his return from the Egyptian campaign and where classical music concerts and exhibitions of important artists are currently organised.

Villa Leuthold, a nineteenth-century public park, with very large specimens of camellias.

Rocca Borromea , whose ruins are located on the hill above the city. It was historically disputed between the Torriani and Visconti families as well as the birthplace of San Carlo .

Asilo Bottelli , a 19th century building in neoclassical style originally used as a nursery school.

Villa Cantoni , built in the 1880s.

The Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo

 

The same topic in detail: Colossus of Saint Charles Borromeo .

This statue, nicknamed the Sancarlone , dominates Lake Maggiore and can be reached by taking the provincial road 35 towards the Ghevio di Meina hamlet , in the San Carlo area. The colossus is approximately 35 meters high (23.40 m for the statue and 11.70 m for the base) and was built between 1614 and 1697 with copper plates . Originally it was planned that the statue, completed in 1698 , would be part of a Sacred Mountain of which, however, only three chapels were built.

 

Society

Demographic evolution

Inhabitants registered

 

Languages ​​and dialects

Even though the city is in Piedmontese territory, the local Verbanese dialect is of the Insubre type ( Western Lombard ).

 

Culture

Museums

The Mineralogical Museum founded in 1983 and located in a nineteenth-century building in Piazza San Graziano.

The Khaled al-Asaad Civic Archaeological Museum .

Libraries

There is the Carlo Torelli Civic Library , founded in 1968

 

Economy

The definitive destruction of the Aronese fortress together with six other citadels in Piedmont was ordered by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 , the day following the victory at Marengo . This meant the possibility of expanding the urban fabric beyond the walls within which it was limited. Thanks to this, large spaces were created on which to build the port, the boatyard and the railway station. Arona's fortune has always been linked to its excellent geographical position, thanks to which it enjoys and has always enjoyed a highly respectable logistical condition.

 

The economy of Arona is mainly based on tourism and trade , although in the area there are some important chemical factories, such as Thurckon Srl, and confectionery, such as the Laica chocolate shop .

 

Infrastructure and transport

The station, under the responsibility of the Lombardy Region, is an important railway hub between the Domodossola-Milan and Arona-Novara lines , and is currently served only by regional trains based on the Service Contract stipulated between Trenitalia/Trenord and the Piedmont and Lombardy Regions. It is also the terminus of the Santhià-Arona railway , which has been replaced by self-service since 17 June 2012.

 

Arona is the headquarters of Navigazione Lago Maggiore.

 

Sports

Twice Arona was the stage arrival site of the Giro d'Italia .

 

1966 14th stage Parma - Arona, won by Franco Bitossi

2001 20th stage Busto Arsizio -Arona, won by Gilberto Simoni

On 24 August 2005 Damiano Cunego won the 8th edition of the Gran Premio Nobili in Arona.

 

The Arona football club is based in the municipality , whose internal field is the Valerio Del Ponte stadium .

 

There is an American football team , the Arona 65ers , Italian champions in 2015 and a basketball team, Arona Basket , which participates in the youth and Serie C championships.

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), was presented to the United States by the people of France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island (part of New York but physically on the New Jersey side of the New York Harbor) as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to the U.S. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

The statue is of a robed woman holding a lit flame, and is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf (originally made of stained glass and lit from the inside.) It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 ft (46 m) tall, but with the pedestal and foundation, it is 305 ft (93 m) tall.

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

The statue is a central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, administered by the National Park Service.

Vista dalla terrazza del ristorante/bar Belvedere

Angera vista dalla terrazza del ristorante bar Belvedere

The Sacro Monte di Arona, devoted to Charles Borromeo, is part of the Sacri Monti built in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is located in the territory of the town of Arona, province of Novara, region of Piedmont, Italy.

 

Around 1610 (when Charles Borromeo was canonized) father Marco Aurelio Grattarola had the idea of building a Sacro Monte devoted to Saint Charles on a hill behind his native town. The work was intended to celebrate the archbishop of Milan in the territory of his family.

 

The greatness of the figure inspired the idea of a huge statue visible from the opposite side of the Lake Maggiore. The initiative received the support of Federico Borromeo, who succeeded the cousin as archbishop of Milan.

 

The architect Francesco Maria Richini was charged with the project. He proposed an ambitious project, only partially realised. Starting with a triumphal arch, three paths should have started, each one with five chapels illustrating the life of Saint Charles and his spirituality.

 

In July 1614 Federico Borromeo celebrated the start of the construction. One of the first buildings to be completed was the church, designed by Richini as a central plan church.

 

Only a few chapels were built. Today only three remain, but without the decorations. For the realisation of the statues artists involved in the construction of the Sacro Monte di Varallo came.

 

The death of father Grattarola in 1615, the plague of 1629-1631 and the death of Federico Borromeo in 1631 interrupted the works. Only in 1692, the Borromeo family started again the construction. The new project, made by the architect Carlo Fontana, was far more modest than the original.

 

The sanctuary was completed only in 1725 with the building of the roof. Today over the main altar there is a painting by Giulio Cesare Procaccini; behind the altar has been reconstructed the original room of Saint Charles with the furniture coming from the Rocca Borromea nearby.

 

In front of the church, on the opposite side of the square, is " Saint Charles' seminary". From the square, a stairway takes you to the colossal statue of Saint Charles. The statue's design was made by Giovanni Battista Crespi, called il Cerano.

 

The statue, 28 m in height, commonly called Sancarlone, was realised in 1698. It is an empty structure made of wrought copper. It is possible to climb up to the head thanks to an inner stairway. Only the Statue of Liberty is a taller metal statue.

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island, New York in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

 

The statue is of a female figure standing upright, dressed in a robe and a seven point spiked rays representing a nimbus (halo), holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand. The tablet bears the words "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence.

 

The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151 feet 1 inch (46.5 m) tall, with the pedestal and foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 m).

 

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States,[2] and, more generally, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes.

 

The statue is a central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, administered by the National Park Service.

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