Hikes in Piedmont
Who ever says that you cannot turn back time has never been to Biella. Or, more precisely, has not taken the funicular elevator from downtown Biella up to the oldest part of town, 50 metres up and 100 years back. Our Time Travel in Biella We travelled to Biella (and near-by Oropa) as a stopover…
The Santuario di Oropa aka Sacred Mountain of Oropa, in the northern Italian region of Piemonte is one of the largest sacred shrines in the Alps – and also one of the most storied. It all started with St Eusebius in the 4th century: on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as the legend has…
The shorelines of Lake Mergozzo and the Lago Maggiore are less than a mile and a world apart. Where the Lago Maggiore is sublime and dramatic, Lake Mergozzo is serene and understated – and where the former is besieged by crowds, you can conduct a walk around its near neighbour in blessed solitude. The contrast…
On one level, the Borromean Islands in the Lago Maggiore can be seen as three independent destinations: as three little towns that have developed in as much isolation from one another as it is possible for places only a few hundred meters apart. Alternatively, however, you can also understand them as cogs in the same…
Northern Italy’s Lago Maggiore may be a big lake – so big that hiking around it will take you a week or more – but its three most celebrated beauty spots are packed into a tiny sub-section. In the Golfo Borromeo, the Lago’s narrow side arm between Stresa and Verbania, you can find all three…
The Lago Maggiore is, despite what its name appears to suggest, not the largest body of water in the Italian “Lake District” (that honour goes to Lake Garda), but it is the most stretched-out. The shortest route around it is 170 km long, and more than 60 km lie between Arona in the south and…
No account of Orta would be complete without a piece on its most eye-catching feature: the island of San Giulio that sits a few hundred meters away from the town in the middle of the lake, mounted like a precious stone on a shimmering expanse of blue. Generally speaking, it is a good idea to…
Knights, peasants and mendicant friars who, 1000 years ago, journeyed throughout Europe in search of a direct encounter with God have written one of the most fascinating chapters of medieval history. The age of pilgrimages can be separated into three distinct periods: the earliest pilgrims sought out the shrines of saints in the hope that…
At first glance, the small lakeside town of Orta – located roughly 70 km north of Milan at the foot of the Italian Alps – comes across as a typical Instagram town: beautiful … … but perhaps a little too confident in the expectation that her many admirers will be so dazzled by her looks…
The Easy Hikers have been going on country hikes and urban walks in roughly even proportions for well over 10 years now, and I still cannot decide which of the two I would go for if I could pick only one. Simply stated, the problem is this: a good country hike beats a good urban…