Lake Orta & Villa Crespi
'Imagine a traveller, weary of Brazil’ s and the Indies’ thousands rich aspect, who returns to his homeland and, on his way, finds a delicious lake, Lake Orta ,...the great and its tumults are far away, proportions become human again'.  This is what Honoré de Balzac wrote during his stay on Lake Orta.  Nowadays Lake Orta still preserves the charm of this frame of Piedmont, land of legends, scenery of encounters and deep passions.  The Villa Crespi, set right in the middle of the beauty, will assure you a wonderful vacation!

SIGHTS - MUSEUMS - PARKS & GARDENS - FOLKLORE & TRADITIONS - THE GASTRONOMY

***This is a list of the places you can reach in a few minutes from our hotels.***

SIGHTS

Orta S.Giulio is a charming medieval village on the shores of lake Orta with wonderful palaces and lanes that lead to piazza Motta where the 16th century Palazzotto stands as a gem of design.

San Giulio Island lies on the shores of the lake and it is the residence of a convent of nuns belonging to an enclosed order . On the island there is the Basilica of San Giulio, that was built on a pre-existent church that according to the tradition was the hundredth church built up by the saint in the fifth century at the end of his peregrination of evangelization. Richly decorated with frescoes of Giovanni Mauro Rosselli, Giorgio Bonola, Giuseppe Zanatta, Giacomo Filippo Monti, Ambrogio Figini, the church preserves the very famous pulpit built with the grey-greenish stone of Oira, a gem of the European Romanesque sculpture.

The Buccione Tower is the remains of a large fortification, 23 meters high and it was once part of the castle on the top of the hill. The first document that testifies the existence of the tower dates back to the year 1200.

The Sacro Monte of Orta from the year 1590 preserves twenty chapels immersed into a park. Splendid terracotta statues stand in the inner side of the chapels and tell the life of San Francesco. The three sides of the promontory overlook the lake with a wonderful view.

Madonna del Sasso Sanctuary was built in the middle of the eighteenth century on a cliff that plunges into the lake. Inside there is a cycle of paintings of Lorenzo Peracino.

Mottarone (1491 meters) is famous for the extraordinary view you can enjoy from his top. People say that in particularly clear days it is possible to see even the Milan Dome.

MUSEUMS

The Circuit of the Ecomuseo of Lake Orta and Omegna is in Pettenasco, a little village at just two kilometres from Orta, and it consists of fourteen museums that collect landscapes, culture, handcraft and local industry of Orta and its surrounding areas including mountains and valleys. This is the list of the 14 museums.

The Tap Museum in S. Maurizio d’ Opaglio is a collection of a large range of taps, including their evolution and the domestic use from past time to the present and a series of texts and images that explain every detail.

The Calderara Collection of Contemporary Art is in Vacciago di Armeno in the seventeenth century house of the painter Antonio Calderara and it consists of 327 work of picture and sculpture, among which 56 were painted by the painter himself. The other 271 works belong to artists from all over the world and represent the different esthetical tendencies of the Sixties and Seventies.

The Ethnographic and Wind Instrument Museum opened in 1956, it is in Quarna Sotto and it has a collection of rare wind instruments including a description of the old methods of construction.

The Umbrella Museum in Gignese is a collection of the rarest umbrellas, parasols and tools with a description of the methods of construction and the main trends of this refined accessory from 1600 up to the present.

The S. Giulio Island with its millenary historical events, its artistic and natural beauty is a complex of remarkable museums.

The Sacro Monte di Orta is a charming natural and historical place that offers an enchanting scenery immersed in a luxurious vegetation, twenty chapels of the Seventeenth century with 376 statues telling the life of Saint Francesco.

The Wood and Handcraft Museum is a large exposition of tools, implements, machinery and objects produced in the old factories. The museum is in the medieval House of Pettenasco but it will soon move to the old wood turning factory on the Roggia Molinara that has been recently restored.

The Handcraft and Holy Art Museum in Forno (a little village in the Val Strona) is an exhibition of furnishings, pictures, wood statues and ex voto given to the chapels and to the churches of Forno and Campello Monti all over the centuries.

The Naturalistic Museum of the Strona Valley is still in preparation.

Mottarone has a magnificent view that ranges over the Alps and Mount Rosa, reaching the Milanese plains.

The Consorzio Alpinia Garden is on Monte Mottarone, on the side overlooking Stresa and it is a large and rich collection of alpine herbaceous plants, actually absent in wild nature.

On the Alpe Selviana (in Agrano near Omegna) the Cooperativa Agricola 'Il Glicine' is a centre of biological cultivation of fruit such as raspberries and blackberries, geese and ducks breeding, honey production; it is also a country-tourism centre. Excursions are organised for schoolchildren groups and for those who want to experience a kind of life spent in nature and in a total respect of it. There is also a little naturalistic museum with an exhibition of minerals of Mottarone, insects and local bonsai.

The Madonna del Sasso Sanctuary is in the village of Boleto on a rock overhanging the lake and it is one of the most important sanctuaries in the area of Cusio.

The Foundation of the Art and Industry Museum, commonly called Forum, is a polyvalent structure built up in an architectural complex in the centre of Omegna. Here it is possible to visit the Permanent Museum Collection of historical household articles of Cusio, produced by Alessi, Bialetti, Lagostina. It is also possible to see prestigious art exhibitions and shows of industrial design.

The Rognoni Salvaneschi Museum is the private collection of pictures and objects of Alessandra Rognoni. It consists of clothes, toys, laces, nineteenth century embroideries, furniture, pictures of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, professional household tools and implements.

In Trecate the Gipsoteca Civica di Giuseppe Cassano preserves the collection of all the plaster figures of the artist and his library. Among the most interesting works there are the statues of Alessandro Micca and Alessandro Cassano , the 'Camilla' showed in a competition in the Academy of Brera, the busts of Vincenzo Tornielli and Vincenzo Aurelio Pavese.

The Archaeological Museum of Arona is a collection of finds discovered by the local archaeological group in the areas of basso Verbano, from Castelletto to Gattico, from the area of Vergante to Baveno.

Nearby the house of the custodian of the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Boden in Ornavasso, 1251 ex voto, once hanged on the sanctuary’s walls, are collected and listed: the oldest dates back to the year 1707.  The collection consists of pictures, objects of different metals, embroideries, crutches, alpenstocks and ice-axes that have been given to the Sanctuary to thank it for graces received after illnesses, injuries, and wars.

Palazzo Silva is a building of the Renaissance in Domodossola with a collection of old and modern weapons, an art gallery of valuable pictures, an old library with parchments and volumes of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. Part of the collection is dedicated to Géo Chavez, the famous pilot who flied across the Alps and at the beginning of the twentieth century crashed with his plane near Domodossola.

The Sala Manzoniana is in a hall of Villa Stampa in Lesa. The Villa belonged to the Count Decio Stampa who was the first husband of Teresa Borri who got married for the second time with Alessandro Manzoni. A part from the furniture of the study and the manuscripts of Giulio Carcano, it is possible to see some reproductions of documents that prove the friendship between Manzoni and Antonio Rosmini.

Il Museo del Paesaggio is in Pallanza in the Viani - Dugnani palace and it offers the possibility to visit five different sections: archaeological finds of the second half of the nineteenth century, fifteenth century frescos and several Lombard and Piedmontese pictures of the second half of the nineteenth century and of the beginning of the twentieth. Masterpiece of the collection are the works in bronze, plaster, marble, wax and raw earth of the famous Italo-Russian impressionist sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy.

PARKS AND GARDENS OF CUSIO AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

The Special Natural Reserve of Sacro Monte di Orta covers a 13 hectares area and it was established in 1980 on the top of the hill with the same name.

The Natural Reserve of Monte Mesma covers a 52 hectares area and it was established in 1993 with the aim to preserve the medieval Tower, symbol of the local history of Cusio.

The Special Natural Reserve of Sacro Monte Calvario di Domodossola was founded in 1991 and covers a 16 hectares area including that of Santissimo Crocefisso Sanctuary with the 15 'Via Crucis' chapels.

Going down the opposite side of Mottarone it is possible to visit villas and gardens of the 'queen of Verbano', that is Stresa with the Borromee Islands, known all over the world for their beauty.

The most famous is Isola Bella with its elegant palace in Art of Baroque age and its garden composed of ten terraces place down above the other where wonderful peacocks show themselves to tourists.

Isola Madre, placed in the middle of the Borromeo Gulf, has a luxurious sub tropical garden with plants and flowers imported from all over the world and that have grown thanks to the favourite climate.

The little village of Isola Pescatori is also very nice and picturesque.

The last island of the archipelago is the nice little Island of San Giovanni which is also called isola degli Innamorati (The lovers’ island).

Val Grande National Park was already acknowledged in 1967 as Integral Natural Reserve and it has recently been established as National Park. Val Grande is the largest wild area in Italy and it covers 11.733 hectares area extending to the Ossola Valley, the Vigezzo Valley, the Cannobina Valley, the Intrasca Valley and Verbania hinterland.

Alpe Veglia and Devero Natural Park

Alpe Veglia was founded in 1978 and Devero one in 1990. Since 1995 they have been a common reality covering a 11700 hectares area. As there are many pastures and mountain huts, it is often possible to see little groups of herds that graze and pay no attention to the presence of man. In 1872 a mineral water source was discovered and today it is possible to enjoy it directly.

Ticino Valley Natural Park has an extension of 6500 hectares and it involves eleven towns in the province of Novara. It was established in 1978, aiming to preserve the natural, environmental and landscape features of Ticino Valley and to organise the territory in order to enjoy it for recreational, didactic, scientific and cultural purposes.

Alpinia Botanical Garden was established in 1934 and it is considered a 'living museum' with its 800 essences (new ones are planted every year). Just beyond the entrance a track, snakes among rocky flower beds, and green falls; here you can meet the haeracleum, the catmint, the wormwood, the purple, the fine coloured poppy, the white and red daysies, the dittany, the blue, pink and orange gentians, the blue himalayan geranium and many other species.

Recently, due to the doubling of the garden area (today is 4000 sqm large) a promenade, dedicated to the original species and to the natural flora of Mottarone, has been created. It is also possible to enjoy a wonderful view on Lake Maggiore, Lake Mergozzo , the Lombardy plain and Luino.

Villa Pallavicino covers about 20 hectares area, crossed by lanes, along which you can watch exotic animals like zebras, kangaroos, lamas, exotic birds, ostriches but there are also the most common animals such as hedgehogs, moles, hares and foxes. A lot of these animals are free or live in very wide cages.

Besides the zoo it is possible to visit the 3 hectares natural trip dedicated to the original fauna and flora and including secular trees like Cedars of Lebanon and Californian Sequoias.

Villa Taranto is one of the most famous botanical gardens in Europe with its seven kilometres long lanes and its plants coming from all over the world.