Lake Orta is the westernmost of the Italian lakes, and the one most travellers miss. Thirteen kilometres of water in Piedmont, between the province of Novara and the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, it is separated from Lake Maggiore by nothing more than the ridge of Mount Mottarone - close enough to see across, far enough that the crowds never cross. It is the smallest of the great northern lakes, and that is precisely why those who find it come back.
The geography is simple. An eastern shore, where Orta San Giulio sits on its peninsula. A quieter western shore of villages facing the water. An island at the centre, visible from everywhere and different at every hour.
At Lake Orta, there are no celebrity villas, no ferry queues, no waterfront traffic. Lake Como is roughly ninety minutes east by car and receives more visitors in a summer week than Orta does in a season.
What Orta has instead is scale. You can see the far shore from wherever you stand. You can walk around a village in twenty minutes and be on a mountain path in forty. The water is clean enough to swim in and quiet enough to hear. Travellers who want spectacle choose Como; travellers who want the lake itself choose Orta.
It also works as a pairing rather than a competitor: many visitors combine the two, using Orta as the slower half of the trip.
Orta San Giulio gives the lake its name and is the natural place to begin. The old town runs across a peninsula reaching into the water, with cobbled lanes falling towards the shore and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century palazzi whose facades are still painted.
Its heart is Piazza Motta, which locals call simply "the drawing room": one side open to the lake, the other three closed by arcades and cafés, facing the Palazzo della Comunità of 1582 with its ground-floor loggia and frescoed chamber above. Boats to the island leave from here.
Walk it before ten in the morning, while the lanes are still empty and the light comes in low off the water.
Isola San Giulio is the most photographed place on the lake and, paradoxically, the quietest. It is five minutes by public boat from Piazza Motta, with frequent crossings through the season, or by private water taxi, which also runs from the western shore.
A single road circles the island and returns. It is the Via del Silenzio e della Meditazione, the Way of Silence and Meditation, where plaques set into the wall ask walkers to slow down. Twenty minutes at an easy pace, designed not to be hurried.
At its centre stands the Basilica di San Giulio, Romanesque in origin, with a twelfth-century pulpit in black serpentine among the finest in Piedmont. The rest of the island belongs to the Benedictine abbey of Mater Ecclesiae, home to a community of nuns. It cannot be visited, which is part of why the island stays silent.
Legend holds that in 390 AD Julius, an evangelist of Greek origin, crossed the water on his own cloak to rid the island of serpents and dragons, and founded his hundredth church there.
Above the village, twenty minutes on foot from the centre, is the Sacro Monte di Orta, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003 alongside the other Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.
It is a devotional path built between 1590 and the eighteenth century: twenty chapels in a chestnut wood, each dedicated to an episode from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, with life-size terracotta figures and frescoed walls. The climb is gradual and the view over the lake opens at every turn. Mid-morning or late afternoon, it is close to empty.
On the far side the pace changes. Pella is a fishing village on the water, with the landing from which boat processions still set out for the island. Just outside the centre stands the Romanesque church of San Filiberto, the only one in Italy dedicated to this saint, its bell tower dating from between 1075 and 1110 - the oldest on the western coast.
Higher up is Madonna del Sasso, an eighteenth-century sanctuary on a spur of pink granite more than six hundred metres above the water. From there the whole lake is visible, from Gozzano in the south to Omegna in the north, the island reduced to a green point at the centre. It is the most complete view on the lake.
From this shore the island is seen head-on rather than from above - a different perspective, and a far less crowded one.
Yes. Lake Orta is among the cleanest of the Italian lakes and warms earlier than its larger neighbours because of its size, reaching comfortable temperatures from June through early September. Public beaches and swimming spots are found at Pettenasco, Gozzano and along the western shore, most of them free and none of them crowded by Como standards.
The lake reaches a depth of around 143 metres, so the water stays cool below the surface even in August.
The rest of the shoreline deserves time. Pettenasco has a quiet lakefront promenade and the most accessible beaches. Gozzano, at the southern end, holds the Torre di Buccione, a twelfth-century watchtower in the nature reserve that bears its name. Omegna, to the north, is the town of the Cusio, where Alessi, Bialetti and Lagostina were all founded - the Forum Museo del Casalingo tells how Italian design for everyday objects began on these shores.
With more time you can reach the Valle Strona, or cross to Lake Maggiore and the Borromean Islands in under forty minutes.
One day covers Orta San Giulio and Isola San Giulio, with the climb to the Sacro Monte in the afternoon. It works, but it leaves out the western shore entirely.
Two days add Pella, San Filiberto and Madonna del Sasso, with room for a boat trip or a walk on the paths above the villages.
Three days close the circuit: Omegna and the Cusio, Pettenasco, the beaches, perhaps an e-bike ride along the shore. Three days is also the point at which the lake stops being somewhere to see and becomes somewhere to be.
Lake Orta is about an hour by car from Milan Malpensa airport and an hour and a half from central Milan. By train, the Novara–Domodossola line serves Gozzano, Orta-Miasino, Pettenasco and Omegna, with connections from Milan Centrale via Novara. The two shores are linked by the SP229 to the west and the SP46 to the east; the full loop by car takes a little under an hour.
The most fitting way to move here, though, remains the water. The public boat service connects Orta, the island, Pella and Omegna. In summer crossings are frequent; out of season, check the timetable.
May and June bring long light and full water without the August traffic. September and October are the quietest months and arguably the most beautiful, when morning mist sits on the lake and the chestnut woods above the villages turn. Winter is austere and largely closed, but the island in January is a thing worth seeing.
Facing the water on the Pella shore stands Casa Fantini Lake Time: a house rather than a hotel, where the lake's own time sets the pace of the day and Isola San Giulio is watched from the terrace, head-on, as the light shifts. Most of the places described above are reached from here on foot, by boat or by bicycle.
Piazza Motta angolo
Via Roma 2, 28010
Pella (NO), Italy
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