Arona (Aruna in Lombard) is an Italian town of 13 930 inhabitants
in the province of Novara in Piedmont. Fifth city in the province by
population, today 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 by the convenient connection with Milan
(motorway and railway).
The municipality is home to the
Lagoni di Mercurago Natural Park, one of the "prehistoric
pile-dwelling sites around the Alps", which has been listed as a
UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011.
The most touristic part of Arona, develops along the shores of Lake
Maggiore. The Marconi lakefront offers a panoramic pedestrian route from
the railway station, along the way you come across the tourist office
and a little further on, beyond the pleasant equipped park, the landing
stage for navigation on the lake, following the lakefront you reach
Piazza del Popolo , the oldest square in the city in which the Broletto
buildings and the ancient church of Santa Maria di Loreto stand out.
Numerous restaurants overlook the arcades of the square.
Alternatively, you can enter what the locals call "il corso" or Corso
Cavour, a narrow pedestrian street on which there are shops, ice cream
parlors and other clubs. Parallel to Corso Cavour is Piazza San
Graziano, from the staircase you reach the Romanesque church of the
Santi Martiri. In Piazza San Graziano there is also the Civic
Archaeological Museum which houses interesting finds from the Golasecca
culture.
From Piazza del Popolo, the rocky outcrop on which the
remains of the Rocca di Arona are located is clearly visible, from which
you can enjoy a beautiful panorama over the lower Verbano area.
Collegiate Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. The current
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
massive restoration and interior decoration works. at the end of
which, on 10 March 1608, the church was erected as a collegiate
church. After the substantial repairs of 1856-1867 it was
rededicated in 1858 by the bishop G. F. Gentile. It is in the
Gothic-Byzantine style, altered by later elements. The limestone
stone façade, with a central rose window, has fifteenth-century
elements, and a notable bas-relief of the Nativity of the Redeemer,
by Luca Beltrami ascribed to the Mantegazza brothers, authors of the
lower part of the Certosa di Pavia. Inside you can admire the high
altar built in 1812 to a design by Abbot Zanoia; the Holy Family of
Gaudenzio Ferrari in six fields, with the signature Gaudentius
Vincius and the date '15', on wood and enclosed in a carved frame of
the time; the Nativity by Andrea Appiani; the Annunciation and the
Marriage of Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone, donated by
Cardinal Federico Borromeo. There are also four reliquaries that
contain the pallium, the miter, the crosier of San Carlo Borromeo
donated by Cardinal Federico. They were renewed in 1920 by the
Aronese citizenship in fulfillment of a vow made during the last flu
pandemic, which was deemed to have ceased 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 Savior and of
the Saints Graziano and Felino, founded in the second half of the
10th century. No traces remain of the original building. Completely
rebuilt, it was returned to worship the year following that of the
consecration of the Collegiate, 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 known as 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
Sanctuary of the Sacro
Monte di San Carlo
Visitation Monastery
Church of San
Giuseppe, formerly dedicated to Sant'Eusebio
Parish Church of San
Giusto (in the Montrigiasco district)
Church of Santa Maria di
Loreto (also known as Santa Marta)
Church of San Giovanni
Battista (in the hamlet of Dagnente)
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
(erected in 1721, with a facade rebuilt in 1841; altarpiece by
Giuseppe De Albertis, from Arona, with Saints Anna and Joachim with
Mary as a young girl)
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
ruling the city.
Villa Ponti, which hosted Napoleon Bonaparte on
his return from the Egyptian countryside and in which classical
music concerts and exhibitions of important artists are currently
organized.
Villa Leuthold, a nineteenth-century public park with
huge specimens of camellias.
Rocca Borromea, whose ruins are
located on the hill overlooking the city. It was historically
disputed between the Torriani and the Visconti as well as the
birthplace of San Carlo.
Asilo Bottelli, a nineteenth century
neoclassical style building originally used as a kindergarten.
Villa Cantoni, built in the 1880s.
The Colossus of San Carlo
Borromeo
This statue, nicknamed the Sancarlone, dominates Lake
Maggiore and can be reached by taking the provincial road 35 to the
hamlet of Ghevio di Meina, in the San Carlo area. The colossus is
about 35 meters high (23.40 m the statue and 11.70 m the base) and
was built between 1614 and 1697 with copper plates. Originally it
was expected that the statue, completed in 1698, was part of a Sacro
Monte of which only three chapels were built.
By plane
The nearest airport is Milan Malpensa (Somma Lombardo)
which is about 20 km away, Arona can be reached via a bookable bus
service
By car
By car Arona can be reached
From Milan:
along the A8 and then the A8/A26 branch (exit Castelletto Ticino) or
continuing on the A26 towards Gravellona Toce (exit Arona)
From
Turin: along the A4 in the direction of Venice and then the A26 in the
direction of Gravellona Toce (Arona exit)
From Novara: State Road 32
From Verbania: Sempione State Road 33
In the immediate vicinity of
the station there is a large number of free parking spaces, while
approaching the center and along the lakefront, parking is subject to
payment.
From 18 June and for the entire summer time period, the
Limited Traffic Zone along Corso Marconi is active, on some days and at
times a stretch of the lakefront is therefore not accessible by car.
The ZTL is in force:
Friday from 22.00 to 07.00
Saturday from
22.00 to 07.00
Sundays and holidays from 15.30 to 19.00
On the
train
The Arona railway station is served by the lines:
Milan-Domodossola
Arona-Novara
By bus
Replacement buses run
the service on the Arona-Santhià line.
Arona train, C.so Repubblica (From the station, continue 300 meters keeping the lake on your right.), info@treninodiarona.it. €5. From March to September: Sat-Sun 10.00-18.00. The Arona Express train is the only exciting little train in Arona, with a breathtaking tourist route to discover the beauties that have made the city of Arona famous all over the world. It is active from March to September, on Saturdays and Sundays, from 10.00 to 18.00. Arona train The train allows you to visit the Rocca Borromea Park or the San Carlone. With a discounted ticket you can arrange to visit both attractions.
Souvenirs La Cambusa (Bar La Cambusa), Corso Repubblica 108 (about 100 meters from the train station). They sell various souvenirs of Lake Maggiore.
Origins
From Arona, in Roman times, the Via Severiana Augusta
passed, a Roman consular road that connected Mediolanum (modern
Milan) with the Verbannus Lacus (Lake Verbano, or Lake Maggiore),
and from here to the Simplon pass (lat.Summo Plano).
The
first written documentation confirming the existence of a socially
organized place called Arona dates back to 979: it is an attestation
that allows to identify this date only by induction, so much so that
some historians argue instead 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 prehistoric
times; in fact, in the Lagoni locality, near the hamlet of
Mercurago, a pile-dwelling settlement dating back to the Bronze Age
(active from the 18th to the 13th century BC) was found in 1860 and,
in 1971-1972, a Golasecchian necropolis from the end of the 6th -
beginning of 5th century BC Human traces are also documented in the
peat bog of Motto San Carlo, in which an arrowhead dating back to
the Neolithic and the only object of the Copper Age was found.
Of the wooden finds extracted in the nineteenth century, such as
the remains of three wheels that turned in neutral on a central axis
and were equipped with rudimentary non-concentric spokes and those
of a pirogue carved into a tree trunk, only the plaster casts
remain. They were obtained from the footprints in the peat by
Bartolomeo Gastaldi, who at the time collected and studied them but
could not 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 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 were 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 There are vases of exquisite
workmanship, bracelets, fibulae, rings, bronze belt hooks. The
ceramics found in large quantities around the Rocca di Arona testify
to a subsequent settlement to that of the Lagoni and have been
assigned to the culture of Canegrate, Protogolasecca and Golasecca.
The Celtic Gauls
The fifth century marks a moment of crisis
in the lower Verbano, and only in the third-second century does a
conspicuous presence of people reappear, this time Celto-Gallic. It
dates back to the 2nd century BC. a valuable bronze anklet found at
the foot of the fortress. It is precisely in this period that the
first socially organized residential units are formed. The
urbanization of the area is fully justified by the presence of the
Rocca di Arona, 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 nucleus developed around the Benedictine abbey of
San Salvatore, founded in 979 by Count Amizzone del Seprio. Evidence
of this development is documented in a "Cronaca" or "Pasionario", a
kind of zibaldone 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 narration
of the martyrdom of the 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 in parchment written in medieval Latin
and written in Gothic. The Benedictine abbey, over time, lost its
main prerogatives, mainly due to the rise of a civil authority which
identified itself first in the Della Torre family, and subsequently
after its demolition, in the Visconti, 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. Later it
passed to the Torriani family (XII century). After the battle of
Desio (1277), it belonged to the Visconti and in the first decades
of the fourteenth 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, a
lineage of bankers originally from San Miniato in Tuscany. When the
Visconti family died out with the daughter of Filippo Maria Visconti
who married 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 Rocca and the village of Arona, granted to him in 1449
with a letter from Filippo Maria authorizing his vassal to create
walls, drawbridges, military defense works, and also places for the
gathering and custody of ships: the first documented military port
of Lake Maggiore. The fortress was so well defended that it resisted
an attack 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
With all the duchy of Milan it was
under Spanish and then Austrian rule. With the Treaty of Worms
(1743) it passed into the domains of the Savoy state, under Carlo
Emanuele 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. In 1838 Carlo Alberto of Savoy awarded it the
title of city. In 1855 the railway line to Novara was opened and
during the 19th century industrial and tourist activities were
established. At the end of the century the lake suffered a
disastrous flood.
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 (called "mottos") extend all around, 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 area is also hilly, with altitudes gradually decreasing
from north to south (and from west to east in the inhabited center)
from 513 m in Motto Mirabello (near the hamlet of Dagnente) up to
195 m on the shore at the lake.
The hilly reliefs are
generally covered by woods which occupy more than half of the
Aronese territory, urbanized areas lie on 33% of the surface and
meadows or pastures on 9%; smaller percentages are destined to
parks, gardens and green sports areas (2.3%), vegetable gardens,
orchards, nurseries and vineyards (1.7%), uncultivated herbaceous
plants (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".
The definitive destruction of the Arone fortress together with six
other citadels of Piedmont was ordered by Napoleone Buonaparte in 1800,
the day following the victory of 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 shipyard, 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 respectable logistical condition.
The
economy of Arona is mainly based on tourism and commerce, even if there
are some important chemical factories in the area, such as Thurckon
S.r.l, and confectionery factories, such as the Laica chocolate shop.
Twice Arona was home to the stage finish 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 Nobili Grand Prix in Arona.
The Arona football club has its headquarters in the municipality,
whose internal field is the Valerio Del Ponte stadium.
There is
an American football team, the Arona 65ers, who play in the Third
Division championship and who won the Italian flag football championship
in 2015.