Arona

Small Lago Maggiore (Lake Maggiore) town dominated—literally—by St. Charles Borromeo

Il Carlone, the 76-foot staue of San Carlo Borromeo in Arona. (Photo courtesy of Distretto Turistico dei Laghi)

Partway up the western shore of Lake Maggiore, the sprawling modern town of Arona was once ancient stronghold of the Borromei and boasted a vast castle to rival that of Angera directly across the lake, but the fortress was razed by Napoleon.

The only lasting monument in Arona to the great family rises high above town: a disconcertingly colossal 17th-century bronze statue of San Carlo Borromeo known as Il Carlone—the Big Charlie.

Attack of the seven-story saint

Now, every Renaissance family of any standing in Italy produced at least one pope or saint, and the Borromei had Charles. San Carlo Borromeo was an archbishop and social welfare champion who carried out Counter-Reformation ideals in the late 16th century.

He was also an arts patron (he founded Milan's Pinacoteca Ambrosiana). In due course, and a couple of healing-the-blind-type miracles later, this popular bishop was sanctified soon after his death.

The great statue dedicated to this great man stands 76 feet high atop a 40-foot pedestal (making it the second highest statue in the world, after the Statue of Liberty), one gargantuan hand raised to bless the lake and his hometown below.

The view from inside Il Carlone's head. (Photo by Alessandro Vecchi) You can clamber up a rickety and tight ladderlike stair into Big Charlie's giant head to lean on the inside of his lips and peek out his pupils past the 17th-century church just below (decorated with San Carlo paintings) to the lake beyond and, on the far shore (just visible to the left in that pictire), the Rocca Borromeo in Angera.

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