Orta S. Giulio and its legend

Today we’ll come back to Piedmont Region in Italy for a pleasant and relaxing trip… In the province of Novara, there is the Lake Orta and a small town Orta S. Giulio with its legend…

This characteristic village consists of two nucleuses of which the main one, the village of Orta, stands on the bank of the homonymous lake just in front of the second suggestive nucleus located on the Island of S. Giulio, which is about 400 meters from the shore.

Orta S. Giulio is, in our opinion, one of the most beautiful Italian villages. The Italian Touring Club gave it the “orange flag”, a title that identifies an elite of Italian small municipalities able to offer to visitors/tourists a best quality welcome.

A trip to the lake is relaxing… because it is enough to observe the calm waters, in which everything is perfectly reflected creating an effect that enchants all lovers of photography…

Then, If you add to all this the beauty of a village like Orta S. Giulio, also surrounded by the mystery as only legends can do, You’ll intrigue and you’ll wish to visit it as soon as possible…

The center of Orta village is completely pedestrianized and, consists of a series of picturesque narrow streets that intersect each other. Some of them lead to the main one that, parallel to the lake, runs alongside it; while others climb towards the Sacro Monte, a “pearl” included by UNESCO in the World Heritage List.

Finally, the island of S. Giulio, also known as “the island of silence”, dominated by the Convent of the cloistered Benedictine nuns and on which the Basilica of San Giulio stands out, surrounded by the few existing houses. Sister Maria Raphaela is the only one qualified to have contacts with the outside, also taking guided tours. So she tells the story of Giulio and Giuliano, two brothers with Greek origin who came there. Giulio, having listened to the tales of the locals about a dragon that lived in the lake and when it was hungry, devoured livestock and sometimes the same farmers, decided to intervene… He spread his mantle on the surface of the lake like a raft and went to face the dragon in its den where he defeated the terrible dragon thanks to his sword.

A romantic legend or a real story? I can only say you that Sister Maria Raphaela has a surprise…after her guided tours… exclusively for school children… at the back of the altar there is the proof of the veracity of the legend:  a vertebra of dragon jealously guarded in the sacristy… believe what you want!

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