Today is the day we finally went to Lake Orta! I say finally because this is how this trip originated: we had the TV on one day last month (!) and a travel documentary about this beautiful lake in Northern Italy came on, and we went “Huh, a gorgeous Italian lake that we’ve never been to and is less known and crowded than Lake Como? What if we… just go?” And so here we are!
Lake Orta is to the west of Lake Maggiore, where we’re staying, about a twenty-to-thirty minute ride, and while there are fewer sights on that side it’s still very much worth a visit because of Orta San Giulio, which we’ll get to in a minute, but for us also because of the Alessi Factory Store in Omegna, right at the northern tip. This was our first stop today!
If you’re not familiar with Alessi, it’s a very famous Italian home furnishing design brand that makes all kinds of kitchen utensils and appliances in the most stylish fashion, and their headquarters is located right here. Although it cannot be visited by the public, they have an outlet store right outside where you can buy pretty much their entire catalogue at discounts going up to 40% -nothing to sneeze at considering the brand is not usually on the cheap side.
If you are familiar with Alessi, then I can tell you that the outlet shop sells every single Alessi item you can name, and then some. The space juicer, the triangular kettle, the Anna G corkscrew are all there, in all their variations, as are some of the newer creations. The store wasn’t terribly busy, but I was still surprised by the number of people milling about around us, considering it’s on the outskirts of a small town nestled between mountains: the only customers are those who drove specifically for this! Me, I treated myself to a gorgeous metallic fruit basket that kinda looks like a soundwave took physical shape, and a keychain made of steel squares that I later learned was an Audi tie-in (I don’t care for cars. But the design is cool!).
From the store, it was a short drive further down the lakeside to Orta San Giulio, a medieval town situated in a tiny, round peninsula that juts out into Lake Orta. The old town itself is so small it’s pretty much two streets; cars don’t even fit, so we had to scout for parking space on the neighboring hills and then make the trek down. It’s honestly a few minutes’ walk, but between the steep incline and the ruthless sun beaming straight down at us, walking did feel a little heavier than usual!
There’s a very clear line where the modern road ends and becomes a cobblestoned street between ancient buildings, and all of a sudden you’d think you were in the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance perhaps considering that most houses are painted in those familiar orange, peach and ochre tones. We stopped for a morning pick-me-up at a lovely little cafe right towards the entrance of town, where they serve a croissant so good that it passes for French.
Further down the main street, all the shops are extremely touristy (souvenirs, artisanal soaps, you get the idea), and then it opens up to the main square, which as in most towns around here also doubles as a landing stage for the boats arriving at the pier. I’m pretty sure that the docks here connect to multiple places around the lake, but most visitors come here wanting to take the extremely short boat ride to the gorgeous Isola San Giulio, enticingly located right in front of the square, in the middle of the lake, beckoning everyone to visit.
The island looks bigger than it actually is because it’s completely covered in buildings, right down to the water, which is surprising considering that it’s mainly an abbey attached to an ancient basilica. The boat, which costs 5€ roundtrip, dropped us off on an old stone landing right outside the aforementioned basilica. The first church on this site was built on the 4th century, and then it’s been expanded ever since. The interior is spectacular, covered in frescoes that to my eye looked medieval at the ground level, and Baroque at the vault level. There is also a gloomy crypt right underneath the altar housing the remains of San Giulio himself.
After gawking at the small but impressive church, the next thing to do is to take a short walk around the island, which you can do in either direction. Apparently, in an unsubtle attempt at admonishing rowdy tourists into being quiet, the nuns called the clockwise tour “The way if meditation” and the counter-clockwise tour “The way of silence”, with iron plaques featuring inspirational platitudes like “Silence is music and truth” or “In meditation you will find yourself”. Honestly I would have respected them more if the plaques just said “Keep it down you foreign twerps.”
The walk itself is charming; I was surprised by the different architectural styles present in such a small surface, as well as by the size of a couple of eight-storey buildings among all the smaller houses. It is, however, short, as there’s only so much meditation to be done on this tiny rock before heading back to town.
It was lunchtime by the time we hopped off the boat and onto the mainland, but finding a place to eat was no easy feat. As in the other towns we’ve visited, the restaurants on the main area are all tourist traps; the problem is that in bigger towns we could just walk further out and find better places, whereas here there just isn’t really more town to explore! (My guidebook recommendations are all outside of the town proper) In the end we had to settle for the place that looked the least bad, where I ordered what turned out to be the worst risotto I’ve ever tasted -simultaneously too hard and too soupy. They can’t all be good, I guess!
After lunch, we climbed back up the hill to the other main attraction in Orta: the Sacro Monte. This is a weird collection of chapels and shrines scattered around the leafy top of the hill that overlooks the lake. They were apparently built around the 17th century and hold dioramas depicting different events in the life of Saint Francis.
It’s frankly a bit of a weird place, because the chapels themselves may be historical but they’re certainly not remarkable aesthetically, and the displays inside range from garish to boring, so really the only reason to recommend the trek uphill is the admittedly impressive view of the lake and Isola San Giulio from the top. This is the only time I got to see the island all by itself, so the view may have been worth it after all.
By the time we left it was only about 3PM and it felt wrong to just go back home -even though I was certainly tired enough to just beach myself on the couch for the rest of the day- so we decided to stop at Omegna on the way back.
My guidebook says it’s a charming old town “good for window-shopping”, which turned out to be… just a big fat lie, I guess. The lakeside view is nice enough, if not for the fact that by now we’ve seen this kind of sight in every town we’ve been to. The river going up a canal makes for a pretty picture, but that’s about it: we tried walking around the center and found it charmless, gave up and got back in the car. We did have ice cream, so it wasn’t fully a wash!
That’s it for Lake Orta! Having seen it now, I think we made the right choice staying in Stresa for the duration of our holiday, but Orta is absolutely a must-see along with the other highlights around Lake Maggiore. Make sure to add it to your itinerary if you have a way to make it there!
This Is A Lake 