Orta San Giulio

Main sights

Main sights include the Broletto, the Palazzo Penotti Ubertini, Villa Crespi and the Sacro Monte di Orta.

Villa Crespi is a 19th-century Moorish revival-style rural palace located in Orta, and is now a luxury hotel and restaurant managed by chef and restaurateur Antonino Cannavacciuolo. Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, the original owner who commissioned the mansion as his family holiday home, wanted the villa to remind him of the buildings he saw during his working trips to the Middle East. Therefore, a minaret-looking tower overlooking the lake was included in the building.

In 1914, it was the location for the film Iwna, the Ganges' Pearl (original title Iwna, la perla del Gange) by Giuseppe Pinto.

The Sacro Monte of Orta is located within a historical park, which now is a nature reserve, of 13 hectares.

It includes:

21 votive chapels dating back to the end of the 16th and 17th centuries with frescoes and terracotta sculptures narrating the life of Saint Francis of Assisi;

370 real dimension polychrome statues of terracotta realized by the best artists of the Lombard school, who also worked on the Milan Duomo;

over 900 frescoes creating real theatrical representations.

The devotional path ends with the Church of Saint Francis and Nicolao, a proto-Romanic building that was then remodelled in the 17th century so that it would resemble the Lower Basilica of Assisi.

Sacro Monte of Orta was inspired by the nearby Sacro Monte of Varallo, which dates back to the end of the 15th century.