| Orta San Giulio | ||
 | ||
| State | Italy | |
|---|---|---|
| Region | Piedmont | |
| Territory | Cusio | |
| Altitude | 294 m a.s.l. | |
| Surface | 6.65 km² | |
| Inhabitants | 1.167 (2010 census) | |
| Name inhabitants | Orthosis | |
| Prefix tel | 39 0322 | |
| POSTAL CODE | 28016 | |
| Time zone | UTC 1 | |
| Patron | Santa Maria Assunta (August 15), San Giulio di Orta (January 31) | |
Position
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| Institutional website | ||
Orta San Giulio is a city of Piedmont.
To know
It is part of the most beautiful villages in Italy and has been awarded the orange flag by the Italian Touring Club.
Geographical notes
On the eastern bank of the Lake Orta, is 45 km from Novara.
Background
The history of the city is substantially identified with that of the lake. At the end of the fourth century the two Greek brothers Giulio and Giuliano, originally from theAegina island they arrive on the shores of the lake and dedicate themselves, with the approval of Emperor Theodosius I, to the demolition of pagan places of worship and the construction of churches. Legend has it that St. Julius left his brother Giuliano the task of building a Gozzano the ninety-ninth church, looking alone for the place where the hundredth would have risen. Having identified the right place on the small island, but not finding anyone willing to ferry it, Giulio would have spread his cloak over the waters by sailing on it. On the island Giulio defeated the dragons and snakes that populated that place, an evident symbol of pagan superstition, driving them out forever and laying the foundations of the church in the same spot where the basilica of San Giulio is today. The legend of the Saint Julius is mentioned in numerous works.
With the arrival of the Lombards, around the year 570, the lands ofAlto Novarese they were framed in the Duchy of San Giulio, at the head of which was placed in 575 the Duke Mimulfo, with the task of defending Ossola from the Franks. When, apparently due to the betrayal of Mimulfo, the Franks crossed the Simplon, the king of the Lombards Agilulfo had Mimulfo beheaded. A sarcophagus said to have housed his remains is currently used as an alms box in the Basilica.
In 957 the castle of the island of San Giulio, where Berengario d'Ivrea had barricaded himself, was besieged by Litolfo, son of Emperor Otto I. On the death of Litolfo, Berengario resumed hostilities, forcing the emperor himself to Italy. While Berengario was fortified in San Leo in the duchy of Spoleto, his wife Willa, gathered all his treasures, took refuge on the island of San Giulio, these being the only fortresses in the kingdom that could resist for a long time. The siege of 962 on the island actually lasted two months after which the queen surrendered. Otto took possession of the treasure but, admired by the queen's courage, allowed her to join her husband. During the siege, Guglielmo da Volpiano, the future abbot of, was born on the island Dijon.
In 1219, after a twenty-year dispute between the bishop and the Municipality of Novara, the episcopal fiefdom of the Riviera of San Giulio. In 1311 the small state became an imperial county and later also known as the bishop's principality. In 1767 the sovereign rights over the territory were ceded to the House of Savoy. The definitive transfer of power to the Savoy, however, took place only in 1817 with the official resignation by the last titular prince-bishop. The Municipality of Omegna and the northern part of the lake instead federated with the Municipality of Novara since 1221, following the fate of the Novara area.
Over time the small state was divided into three administrative units: Upper Riviera with Orta as its capital; Lower Riviera with capital Gozzano and Lordship of Soriso, with Upper and Lower Soriso.
How to orient yourself
Orta San Giulio: full screen map.Neighborhoods
The towns of Corconio, Imolo and Legro are part of its municipal territory.
How to get
On the train
The reference station to get to Orta San Giulio is that of Orta-Miasino located on the Domodossola-Borgomanero-Novara railway line. From the station the center of Orta can be reached via the Borgomanero-Omegna bus line managed by Autoservizi Comazzi. The same bus line connects Orta with the Arona and Borgomanero railway stations.
- 1 Orta-Miasino station, Hamlet of Legro. The station has an automatic ticket machine, a waiting room and a bar.
How to get around
The only way to get around the town of Orta is on foot.
By car
Despite the high number of parking spaces in the season of greatest tourist influx it can become difficult to find a place, for day trips it is advisable to arrive in Orta before 10 am.
Public car parks are subject to a fee with a maximum daily rate of € 10 and an hourly rate of € 2.
The first car park you come across when arriving from via Panoramica is the Prarondo parking area (90 spaces, unattended, accessible to campers). Continuing on via Panoramica you reach the underground parking Diania (230 spaces, unattended, not accessible to campers).
What see
Whatever the means you choose to reach Orta San Giulio, the first building you come across when taking the road to the town is
- 1 Villa Crespi. Commissioned in 1879 by the cotton industrialist Cristoforo Benigno Crespi following the dictates of Moorish architecture that had fascinated him on his frequent business trips. Now converted from a private residence into a luxury hotel with a two-star Michelin restaurant run by the famous chef Antonino Cannavacciuolo.
Immediately after Villa Crespi there is a crossroads, on the right the modern via Panoramica following which you reach the large car parks in the center, on the left the oldest via Fava which can be traveled on foot, leaving the car in the car parks at the beginning of via Panoramica.
In the town of Orta
- 2 Motta square. Central point of the life of the small town of Orta, the square, surrounded on three sides by buildings with arcades, has been the seat of the market since 1228, which still takes place every Wednesday. Overlooking the lake, boats leave from here for the island of San Giulio and here there are numerous bars and ice cream parlors.
- 3 palace of the Community of the Riviera (familiarly called "Palazzotto"). Located on the northern side of Piazza Motta, it was built in 1582 as a meeting place for the councilors of the Riviera di San Giulio and for the administration of justice.
- 4 Piazza Ragazzoni. It can be reached by continuing north after the Palazzotto, in the picturesque elongated square, there are among other things the post office and the primary school building.
- 5 Villa Bossi (Town hall of Orta), Via Bossi, 11. The ancient Bossi house, dating back to the eighteenth century, was restored in 1840, later it passed to the municipality which transformed it into a town hall. The lakeside garden is very characteristic
From Piazza Motta rises, near the Palazzotto, the ascent of Motta (via Caire Albertoletti), on this road there are some of the historic buildings of Orta such as
- 6 The house of the Dwarves (Marangoni House). Probably the oldest building in Orta because it dates back to the fourteenth century, so called because of the small windows located on the second floor.
- 7 De Fortis Penotti Palace (Ubertini Palace). The beautiful neoclassical face is interrupted by the large door through which the carriages headed for the internal courtyard passed.
- 8 Gemelli Palace. The imposing late Renaissance mansion is characterized by a terrace with a parapet with small stone columns.
At the top of the Motta climb is the
- 9 Parish Church of Santa Maria Assunta.
- 10 Church of San Quirico.
- 11 Church of San Bernardino.
The Sacro Monte
- Sacro Monte. The Sacro Monte di Orta rises on the hill that rises in the center of the peninsula of Orta-S.Giulio, located on the western shore of Lake Orta. It was built on the emulation of the Sacro Monte di Varallo; the 20 chapels that compose it depict episodes from the life and miracles of St. Francis of Assisi. It was built in three distinct periods, between 1590 and 1788. In 1583 the Ortese community decided to erect a group of chapels and a convent on the "Selva di San Nicolao" to house, by the will of S. Carlo Borromeo and by the Abbot of Novara Amico Canobio, the Capuchin Franciscan friars.
- In a first construction phase that reaches almost to the middle of the seventeenth century, artists such as the sculptors Giovanni d'Enrico and Cristoforo Prestinari, and the painters Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Mauro della Rovere called the Fiammenghini. Also among the painters, the absence here of Giovanni Battista Crespi known as Cerano, present instead at the Sacro Monte di Varallo, however, is compensated by the presence of Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone and Antonio Maria Crespi.
- In the second half of the seventeenth century, with an accentuation of the Baroque taste, we find active as a sculptor Dionigi Bussola, proto-tattoo artist of the Milan Cathedral and great interpreter of the artistic modules of the sacred mountains (in addition to Orta, he was also active in Varallo, Varese is Domodossola). Milanese were also the brothers Carlo Francesco and Giuseppe Nuvolone (chapels X, The victory of St. Francis over temptations and XVII, The death of St. Francis). Starting from the end of the century, the painter Stefano Maria Legnani left a new and different stylistic imprint; then, in the first half of the eighteenth century, other Milanese artists: the sculptor Carlo Beretta and the painter Federico Bianchi.
- The monumental complex called Northern Assisi has in the church of Saints Nicolao and Francesco, totally remodeled in 1600, his beating heart. In this sacred space, a real treasure chest, recently restored, you can admire works in wood and walnut briar, four canvases by the painter Cantalupi, XVIII century, a canvas of the Rocca school, XVIII century, one of the Busca, XVIII century, about fifteen paintings by various authors, a canvas by Procaccini, XVIII century, and a wooden medallion of the XVII century. However, the element of greatest artistic value is a Pietà, venerated with the title of Mother of the Redeemer. It is a German-made wooden sculpture that scholars date between the 10th and 11th centuries, set in a Baroque niche.
- Attached to the church there are now two convents, that one Great originally intended for the Capuchin friars and now private property, and that Small, inhabited by a small community of minor Franciscan friars who take care of the management of the Sanctuary and the reception of pilgrims.
San Giulio Island
- 12 San Giulio Island. The island of San Giulio is the only island of the Lake Orta and is part of the municipality of Orta San Giulio. It is located about 400 meters from the shore, 275 m long and 140 wide, has a perimeter of about 650 m. Around 390 San Giulio built the first church there. In the Lombard period the island was certainly fortified. In 1841 the medieval castle was demolished to make way for the new great Episcopal Seminary. A pedestrian street runs along the entire perimeter of the island, skirting the ancient houses of the canons. Now the island is almost entirely occupied by the Mater Ecclesiae abbey.
- 13 Basilica of San Giulio (on the Island of San Giulio). Tradition has it that this is the hundredth and last church founded by San Giulio, a native ofAegina island in Greece, who with his brother Giuliano dedicated the last years of his life to the evangelization of Lake Orta. According to legend, around 390 the saint reached the island sailing on his cloak and freed it from dragons (symbolic image of the defeat of paganism) by building a small church, dedicated to the twelve apostles. The archaeological excavations carried out inside the building have highlighted the traces of a primitive basilica (5th century - 6th century) in the form of a simple, small chapel with a single apse, facing north. About a century later a new church was built, large and correctly oriented, always with a single apse. The current church with three naves, of Romanesque layout but with numerous alterations in the following centuries, was built in the 12th century, on the model of the ancient cathedral of Novara. Inside there is a precious sculpted ambo (in green serpentine marble of Oira) and supported by four older columns, a true masterpiece of 12th century Romanesque sculpture.
- The façade of the church retains a Romanesque appearance despite the seventeenth-century changes that led to the construction of a pronaos surmounted by a large serliana window. Two protruding pilasters frame the entrance rising up to the roof: they divide the façade into three fields allowing a glimpse of the church's three-nave structure; the two lateral bodies of the façade are delimited by two slender scalar towers (12th century) with mullioned windows and terracotta rings. The basilica has three semicircular apses; the central one is characterized by an elegant gallery of double ferrule terracotta arches.
- The octagonal lantern, already present in the Romanesque period and remodeled at the end of the eighteenth century, on one side has maintained its ancient appearance with the presence of a blind trifora with slender columns and foliated capitals. The Romanesque bell tower rises in a detached position from the church, close to the apses; it is internally divided into six floors lightened in the two highest floors by the presence of a double mullioned window and a mullioned window. While the basilica follows stylistic canons typical of the Lombard Romanesque area, the bell tower is rather placed in the Piedmontese architectural matrix, particularly in that of the abbey of Fruttuaria, which leads to formulate the intervention of Guglielmo da Volpiano, an important figure of abbot and architect born on the island of San Giulio.
- In the interior with three naves with cross vaults, the ancient Romanesque matrix is characterized by the presence of two women's galleries that run through the side aisles up to the transept: they are accessed by two spiral staircases placed inside the two small bell towers that delimit the facade. Most of the other structural elements are instead attributable to the seventeenth-century transformations of the church: it is mainly the construction of a sort of exonarthex leaning against the counter-façade (which functions, on the upper floor, as a connecting gallery of the two women's galleries) and the construction of the crypt (1697) with three naves with ribbed vaults and marble columns that houses the reliquary with the remains of San Giulio.
- The more strictly Baroque aspect is constituted above all by the decorative apparatus of the apse basin and of the vaults of the main nave, with frescoes by the Valsesian Carlo Borsetti, assisted by the quadraturist Pietro Camaschella and depicting the Trinity and the Ascension and glory of St. Julius and the saints Elia, Demetrio, Filiberto and Audenzio, the latter buried in the basilica together with the patron saint. The canvases on display in the apse chapels and in the arms of the transept are mainly baroque. The following may be mentioned: in the left side chapel (called the chapel of the Assumption) a canvas by Francesco del Cairo with the Assumption of the Virgin; at the bottom of the left arm of the transept the large canvas with the Meeting of San Giulio and Sant'Audenzio by Giuseppe Zanatta; in the left side chapel San Giulio yoking the wolf by Giorgio Bonola.
- More ancient artistic testimonies still present in the current decorative apparatus are given by the stupendous Romanesque ambo leaning against the fourth left pillar and the frescoes placed on the walls of the side aisles and on the pillars of the church, expressions of popular devotion that cover a time span ranging from the second half of the fourteenth to the first decades of the sixteenth century. In the chapel at the end of the left aisle, the Calvary group, wooden statues of the crucifix with the Madonna and St. John the Evangelist at the foot of the cross.The group has been attributed to Master of Santa Maria Maggiore, an Ossola sculptor today identified with Domenico Merzagora, and dated around 1490.
- The Romanesque ambo (early 12th century) is built in gray-green serpentine (polished takes on a bronze appearance) from the nearby quarries of Oira. It has a square plan with four columns that support the parapet which, in turn, rests on a base decorated with acanthus sheets. The four columns are different from each other, two have a smooth shaft, the others have relief decorations with intertwining motifs; noteworthy are the capitals with foliage (or with foliage and animal heads). The parapet, in a mixtilinear shape, has two rectilinear parts and a curve on each of the three sides, which make the iconographic reading of the sculpted slabs of which it is made suggestive. Reading the figures counterclockwise we find: a centaur in the act of shooting an arrow at a deer, attacked by two beasts, then the symbolic representations of the four evangelists (the ox of Luke, the winged man of Matthew, the lion of Mark, Giovanni's eagle), and finally the representation of a griffin biting the tail of a crocodile. The two fight scenes - corresponding to the taste of medieval bestiaries - signify the struggle between good and evil. Curiously placed between the lion of Mark and the eagle of John is a male figure who wants to identify himself with Guglielmo da Volpiano, born on the island and venerated by the Church as a saint.
Events and parties
What to do
Shopping
- 1 BPM, Piazza Ragazzoni, 16.
Mon-Sun 00: 00-24: 00. ATM of the BPM group, authorized for the main national and international credit and debit card circuits.
Mon-Sun 00: 00-24: 00. ATM of the BPM group, authorized for the main national and international credit and debit card circuits.How to have fun
Where to eat
High prices
- Villa Crespi, ☎ 39 0322 911902. Luxury restaurant located in a splendid nineteenth-century villa owned by the famous chef Antonino Cannavacciuolo; it also offers a 5-star hotel service.
Where stay
Moderate prices
- 1 Camping Cusio, via Don Bosco 5. Small family-run campsite which, in addition to camping pitches, has bungalows and caravans for hire.
- 2 Camping Orta, via Domodossola, 28. Overlooking a bend north of Orta, it also has caravans and bungalows for rent.
- 3 Camping Miami, via Novara, 69. With pitches and places for campers, there is an equipped beach in front of it.
Safety
How to keep in touch
Post office
The post office of Orta San Giulio is located in the pedestrian center.
- 2 Italian post, Ernesto Regazzoni Square 5, ☎ 39 0322 90157.
Keep informed
- 3 Civic Library, Via Bossi 11.
Around
- Castle of Buccione
Other projects
Wikipedia contains an entry concerning Orta San Giulio
Commons contains images or other files on Orta San Giulio
