This tourist and health resort in the province of Novara is situated above a little peninsula on the east side of Lake Orta. It has charming old buildings, elegant country houses and beautiful gardens, and something of its past remains in its narrow, quiet streets and its baroque houses ornamented with verandahs, wrought iron balconies and porticoed courtyards. You should visit the Church of Santa Maria Assunta which was built in the fifteenth century and effectively rebuilt in the eighteenth. It has three naves and is decorated with baroque paintings and plasterwork. The portrait of San Carlo Borromeo painted by Procaccini between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is particularly interesting. The Palazzo della Comunità, in the central piazza beside the lake, was built at the end of the sixteenth century and has porticoes with granite pilasters and columns. On the wooded slopes behind the village is the Sacro Monte dedicated to St Francis of Assisi.

It was built between 1591 and the second half of the eighteenth century and consists of twenty chapels decorated with frescoes by Morazzone. Nuvolini, Procaccini and Flemish painters. The groups of sculptures by Prestinari and Bussola are also interesting.

On the island of San Giulio, which is part of the commune of Orta San Giulio and ten minutes away by boat, is the Romanesque Church of San Giulio, founded in the fourth century, rebuilt in the eleventh and twelfth, and substantially altered in the baroque period. The bell tower at the rear of the church is eleventh century. The interior is decorated with sixteenth century frescoes by the school of Gaudenzio Ferrari, and baroque plasterwork. It also contains a Romanesque lectern in black serpentine (11th-12th centuries), which is one of the masterpieces of Lombard sculpture.