Orta San Giulio

Orta's history is bound up with its lake and its island. Saint Julius of Novara, also called Julius of Aegina, who according to tradition worked around the lake with his brother Julian and died in 401, is said to have built the hundredth of their churches on the island. A chapel stood there by the 5th century and a larger church by the 6th; in the 11th century Arnulf of Milan called the island impregnable. The present basilica was built in the 12th century.

For centuries Orta was the main centre of the Comunità della Riviera, a self-governing league of communes around the lake. The Riviera di San Giulio was a domain of the bishops of Novara: an independent county under the Holy Roman Empire from 1219 to 1767, and then a bishop's principality under the sovereignty of Savoy, to which the people of the Riviera pledged allegiance in the bishop's palace on the island in September 1767. The village's walls were destroyed in 1311 and never rebuilt, its sheltered position being protection enough; it was sacked only once, by the Sforza, in 1524. The Broletto, the Riviera's council house, dates from 1582, and the chapels of the Sacro Monte were built from the end of the 16th century.

In May 1882 Friedrich Nietzsche and Lou Andreas-Salomé visited Orta and the Sacro Monte. In 1928 the municipality of Orta, called Orta Novarese since 1863, merged with Isola San Giulio to take its present name, and in 2003 the Sacro Monte joined the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Religion has shaped the village's culture more than anything else. The island basilica, a Romanesque church of the 12th century, keeps the presumed relics of Saint Julius, after whom the lake itself was called until the 16th century, and since the 1970s the old seminary beside it has housed a community of Benedictine nuns. The Sacro Monte, inspired by the older one at Varallo, is a pilgrimage site whose 370 life-size terracotta statues and more than 900 frescoes stage the life of Saint Francis like scenes in a theatre.

Orta is one of the Borghi più belli d'Italia, the association of Italy's most beautiful villages, and its tourism remains small in scale. The town's coat of arms, painted on the Broletto, carries the words Hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden, from which the name Orta is said to derive. Artists have left their mark more recently in Legro, whose house walls have been painted with frescoes since 1998.

The lake has drawn writers and film-makers too: Gianni Rodari, born in Omegna at the head of the lake, set one of his books on the island of San Giulio, and the village has served as a film location.

Orta San Giulio has about 1,100 inhabitants. Besides the old village, the municipality includes the island, the hamlet of Legro on the hill behind, Corconio about 2 km to the south, and the few houses of Imola between them on the road to Gozzano.

Tourism is the main business, from the cafés and restaurants around Piazza Motta to the boats that cross to the island, but the village keeps a residential life in its lanes and hamlets. The municipality belongs to a union of hill communes of the Cusio, another name for the lake and its district, and to the ecomuseum of Lake Orta and the Mottarone, which promotes the area's heritage.

The municipality once had two stations on the Domodossola–Novara railway, but Corconio-Ameno has been closed since 2003, leaving Orta-Miasino. The rhythm of the day follows the boats between the square, the island and the other villages of the lake. On the island, the Benedictine nuns of the Mater Ecclesiae abbey live beside the basilica.

The village's table belongs to the cooking of Piedmont, in which veal, wine and butter are among the main ingredients and truffles, garlic, seasonal vegetables, cheese and rice all feature. Gorgonzola, the blue cheese, is one of the cheeses that may be produced in the province of Novara, to which Orta belongs, and the province's farms grow rice and maize. Paniscia, a risotto made with beans, onion, Barbera wine, lard and salami, is a typical dish of Novara, and vitello tonnato, thinly sliced cold veal under a creamy tuna sauce, is one of the region's best-known dishes.

Sweets lean on hazelnuts and chocolate, from gianduja, a blend of chocolate and hazelnut paste invented in Turin, to bonet, a custard dessert made with cocoa and amaretto. Piedmont's wines include Barolo and Barbaresco from the Nebbiolo grape and wines from the Barbera grape, and the region has more cheeses with protected status and more DOC wines than any other in Italy.

Eating out in Orta centres on Piazza Motta and the lanes around it, where small restaurants and cafés serve the village and its visitors, many with views across the water to the island and its basilica.