The best hill towns within 90 minutes of Novara
Leave the flooded rice fields around Novara and the ground starts to rise almost at once. To the north the hills carry nebbiolo grown on volcanic soil, bottled as Gattinara and Ghemme, and stone houses with slate roofs that mark the beginning of alpine Piedmont. To the south the Monferrato is softer, all vine terraces and cellars cut into pale sandstone called tufo, where the autumn brings white truffle, agnolotti and bagna cauda hot enough to eat standing up. Spring and October are the two seasons that reward the drive most, the first for green hillsides and the second for fog, fruit and wine.
Most visitors who come this way point their car at Lake Maggiore instead. Stresa and the Borromean Islands take the great majority of the traffic in this corner of Piedmont, and in July the lakefront promenade, the ferry queues and the hotel terraces at Baveno absorb it all at once. The lake earns the attention, but it is a narrow strip of it, and everything behind it goes comparatively quiet.
The hills do not stop at the lake shore. The same vineyards, sacred mountains, walled villages and Ossola stone continue inland, and that is where the towns on this list sit, all of them inland hill settlements within about an hour and a half of Novara. Some are wine towns with a long trading history, some are pilgrim sites climbing a wooded ridge in chapels, some are compact medieval villages guarding a valley mouth. Fewer people go, and the tables are easier to get.
Of the 24 communes we have mapped in within 90 minutes of Novara, 9 qualify as hill towns: each is an inland hill settlement. The smallest, Cella Monte, has 465 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The best hill towns within 90 minutes of Milan and The prettiest villages within 90 minutes of Novara.
Cella Monte
Why visit Cella Monte
Cella Monte sits at 268 meters in the Monferrato Casalese hills, ten kilometers south-west of Casale Monferrato. The commune holds 465 people.
The defining material is pietra da cantoni, a soft sandstone formed when the Padana sea retreated more than 20 million years ago, found only in this stretch of hill country. The village is built out of nothing else: walls, arches, courtyards and retaining structures all in the same yellow-grey block, so that the church, the palazzo and the ordinary houses of the centro storico read as one continuous fabric rather than separate buildings in a shared style.
Underneath that surface the same stone was hollowed out again. Each infernot sits off a family wine cellar, cut into the sandstone itself, and the cold, dark, still air below ground did what the rooms above could not: keep the best bottles at constant temperature, undisturbed by light, draught or noise.
The village above is stone assembled; the village below is stone removed. Cella Monte is best understood as that pairing, a single sandstone worked in two opposite directions, one raising the borgo and the other hollowing out beneath it.
What to see in Cella Monte
- Infernot di Cella Monte. Small cells reached from the family wine cellar, dark, windless and at constant temperature, built to hold the household's best bottles rather than the everyday stock.
- Ecomuseo della Pietra da Cantoni. Museum of stone and infernot construction, laid out across rooms whose restoration exposed the palazzo's older fabric beneath later plaster and masonry.
- Palazzo Volta. Restored noble palazzo in the centro storico, home of the Ecomuseo, with a fifteenth-century loggia recovered under later masonry.
How to get to Cella Monte
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Novara is roughly 55 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the Monferrato vineyards into leaf and the borgo's stone into its full yellow-grey colour. September and October are harvest, the months the infernot fill again, and the Ecomuseo runs its strongest programme. July and August get hot on the south-facing slopes; the infernot, dug straight into sandstone at constant temperature year-round, are the natural refuge between two and five in the afternoon.
Serralunga di Crea
Why visit Serralunga di Crea
Serralunga di Crea sits in the Basso Monferrato hills forty-five kilometers east of Torino, on the highest of a series of ridges that look across the Po plain. The hill behind the village rises to 443 meters, and it is on this wooded height, rather than in the village itself, that the commune's main structures stand: the sanctuary at the centre, the ring of chapels around it, and the vineyards on the lower slopes beyond the reserve boundary.
The chapels were begun in 1589 by Costantino Massino on a plan of fifteen Rosary stations, expanded over the following two centuries to twenty-three chapels and five hermitages, so what stands today is the accumulation of a long building period rather than a single campaign. The vineyards that surround the hill carry a separate and later UNESCO recognition, from 2014, so the commune holds two world heritage lines on the same stretch of ground: one on the summit, one on the slopes around it.
The village below is small; the hill above is where its two distinctions both sit, layered rather than separate.
What to see in Serralunga di Crea
- Sacro Monte di Crea. Chapels and hermitages climb the wooded hill above the village along a Rosary-plan pilgrim route, each station set among trees with views opening intermittently over the ridge.
- Santuario di Nostra Signora di Crea. Marian sanctuary at the centre of the Sacro Monte, the building the whole climb of chapels was arranged around, traditionally founded by Saint Eusebius of Vercelli.
- Cappella del Paradiso. Final chapel of the Sacro Monte, summit of the climb, with over 300 statues in a polychrome celestial composition.
How to get to Serralunga di Crea
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Novara is roughly 58 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June is the green window in the Basso Monferrato: hills coming into leaf, the climb up the Sacro Monte cool in the morning, and the panorama across the Po plain at its clearest. July and August touch the mid-thirties on the open ridges; the woods around the chapels stay cooler, but the late afternoon climb is hard work. September and October are the wine months, with Monferrato harvest in the surrounding cantine and pilgrim groups returning for the Rosary festivals.
Vogogna
Why visit Vogogna
Vogogna sits at 226 meters on the floor of Val d'Ossola, at the narrow point of the valley where the Toce bends south toward Lago Maggiore. The castle went up on the spur above the village as part of a broader reinforcement of the Duchy of Milan against Swiss incursions over the Sempione, built alongside an older fortified rock that had already held the same defensive line.
Together they anchored the town's promotion to administrative seat for the lower half of the valley, in balance with Domodossola further up, which held the upper half. Spanish rule from the sixteenth century onward reduced the castle's strategic weight, and in 1798 it passed into municipal hands, used at one stage as a prison, before the long restoration that closed in 2005.
The borgo carries Borghi più belli d'Italia and the Bandiera Arancione, and Val Grande National Park borders the commune on the west. What the town amounts to is a lower valley's seat of government grown around a fortress that outlived its military purpose by centuries, wedged between wilderness on one side and the river's bend on the other.
What to see in Vogogna
- Castello Visconteo. Restored from 1990 to 2005, the castle is now open to visitors with a multimedia conference room installed inside its walls.
- Rocca di Vogogna. Earlier fortified rock above the Visconti castle, the original medieval defensive post over the narrow point of the Toce valley.
- Centro storico. Medieval core below the castle with stone houses, narrow streets and the Palazzo Pretorio, the historic administrative seat of Ossola Inferiore.
How to get to Vogogna
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Novara is roughly 75 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings clear walking weather to the Toce valley, with the upper Val Grande slopes drying out and the Visconti castle terraces open for full hours. September and October are the harvest months in Ossola, when chestnut woods turn on the lower slopes and the cooler air carries the view from the Rocca down the valley toward Lago Maggiore. July and August warm the valley floor, but the stone houses of the centro storico keep the streets shaded.
Moncalvo
Why visit Moncalvo
Moncalvo sits at 305 meters on a Monferrato ridge, forty-five kilometers east of Torino. It carries the title of smallest city in Italy, granted by Duke Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga in 1705 and confirmed by Victor Amadeus III of Savoy in 1775.
The town was the first capital of the Marquisate of Monferrato, founded by the Aleramici in the 10th century. Guglielmo Caccia, the Counter-Reformation painter known as il Moncalvo, was born here in 1568 and left major canvases in the churches of San Francesco and Sant'Antonio, alongside works by his daughter Orsola.
The synagogue on Piazza Carlo Alberto is the only one in the world built directly on a city's main piazza, a remnant of the Jewish community recorded here since the 1500s. The Fiera Nazionale del Tartufo, documented for more than five centuries, runs the last three weekends of October and pulls the truffle trade north of Alba into this ridge.
What to see in Moncalvo
- Chiesa di San Francesco. Conventual church holding major canvases by Guglielmo Caccia (il Moncalvo) and his daughter Orsola, both 17th century.
- Sinagoga di Moncalvo. Synagogue on Piazza Carlo Alberto, the only one in the world built directly on a city's main square, with 18th-century interior.
- Chiesa di Sant'Antonio. Smaller historic church preserving further works by Guglielmo Caccia and the Moncalvo school of his workshop.
How to get to Moncalvo
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Novara is roughly 62 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months the ridge feels right. October is the truffle weeks, when buyers and restaurants book the ridge well ahead and the streets around Piazza Carlo Alberto fill on Saturday and Sunday mornings. July and August push past thirty degrees and the centro empties in the afternoon, though the elevation keeps evenings tolerable. His Majesty the Fat Ox's National Fair falls in February.
Ornavasso
Why visit Ornavasso
Ornavasso sits on the Toce river just upstream from Gravellona, where the valley narrows toward the southern threshold of the Val Grande. The quarries worked the right bank of the Ossola valley opposite Candoglia, and their stone traveled well beyond the commune: besides the Milan cathedral, it went into the facade of the Certosa di Pavia and the Octagon of the Duomo di Pavia, a supply line running from the fourteenth century onward.
The town's frazione, Migiandone, formed part of the same Walser settlement, colonists from the Simplon who kept a German dialect alive here into the late nineteenth century, longer than in any Walser community further up the Ossola. The ground beneath the town has its own older history: two pre-Roman necropolises, Celtic and Italic, with burials spanning the second century BC to the first century AD.
Above the centro, the devotional life of the upper Toce climbed the hillside, and in 1944 that same high ground sheltered soldiers and then partisans of the Valtoce division, in the brief Allied-recognised partisan state that held the upper valley that year. A quarry town, a language outpost, and a wartime redoubt turn out to be the same few square kilometers, stacked in time rather than spread across it.
What to see in Ornavasso
- Santuario della Madonna del Boden. Sanctuary above the town, standing 475 meters over the centro, reached by a climb that has drawn devotion from the surrounding valley since it was built.
- Santuario della Madonna della Guardia. Hilltop sanctuary that housed Italian army troops and then partisans during the brief Allied-recognised partisan state of autumn 1944.
- Cave di marmo. Quarries on the right bank of the Toce, still legible in the rock face, the source of stone for both the Duomo di Milano and the Arco della Pace.
How to get to Ornavasso
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Novara is roughly 77 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the Toce down high and clean, the chestnut and beech woods on the marble slopes filling in. July and August are warm and busy with Val Grande trekkers entering through Migiandone; the centro is quieter than Lake Maggiore but the trails fill on weekends. September and October are the strongest months: clear light on the marble quarries, the Boden sanctuary backlit at dusk, and the Val Grande in its autumn copper.
Varallo
Why visit Varallo
Varallo sits at 450 meters where the Mastallone joins the Sesia, the capital of Valsesia and the gateway to the high valleys under Monte Rosa. The lower town gathers along the river confluence, ordinary and administrative, while the devotional complex occupies the rock above it, reached now by cable car but originally by a path of ascent that was itself part of the pilgrimage.
The chapels were conceived as a reproduction of the geography of the Passion, laid out so that walking through them retraced a landscape rather than simply viewing scenes. The complex grew over four centuries to its present scale, with more than eight hundred statues and four thousand frescoed figures distributed across the chapels and the basilica at their center.
UNESCO inscribed the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy as a single serial site in 2003. What results is a town split in function between a valley capital going about its administrative life and a hillside set apart for a single sustained act of devotional theater, the two joined by a short vertical crossing that pilgrims once made on foot.
What to see in Varallo
- Sacro Monte di Varallo. Forty-five chapels and more than eight hundred life-size statues laid out on the rock above town, founded by Bernardino Caimi as a substitute Holy Land for pilgrims.
- Basilica del Sacro Monte. Minor basilica at the heart of the upper complex, focal point of the chapel circuit and the pilgrim route to the painted Holy Land.
- Pinacoteca di Varallo. Civic painting collection in Palazzo dei Musei, including works by Gaudenzio Ferrari and his Valsesian school of sacred painting.
How to get to Varallo
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Novara is roughly 67 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings green Valsesia slopes, the Sesia at full spring flow, and clear walking up to the chapels of the Sacro Monte. September and October are the strongest months, when the larch and beech around the basilica turn and the cooler air carries the painted statues better than summer haze. July and August touch the low thirties on the lower town; the climb to the summit through the wooded path is the right way to enter the chapels in heat.
Candelo
Why visit Candelo
Candelo sits at 350 meters on the right bank of the Cervo torrent, ten kilometers from Biella, with a third of its territory on the Baraggione plateau, a wild grassland of about 5,000 hectares now protected as the Riserva Naturale delle Baragge. The Ricetto is what people come for.
It is a late-medieval fortified shelter built by the local farming community in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: roughly two hundred stone cellule arranged on a pentagonal plan of 13,000 square meters, crossed by five east-west rue and two transverse, the perimeter walls running 470 meters. Goods, grain, wine and forage were stored here under the protection of the local lord.
Only in extreme attack did the population itself withdraw inside. It is the best-preserved structure of its kind in Piedmont.
Candelo joined the Borghi più belli d'Italia in 2002 and has held the Bandiera Arancione of the Touring Club Italiano since 2007.
What to see in Candelo
- Ricetto di Candelo. Thirteenth- to fourteenth-century fortified shelter on a pentagonal plan, with about two hundred stone cellule and 470 meters of walls.
- Rue del Ricetto. Five east-west streets and two transverse, paved in river stone, the cellule grouped along them for storing grain and wine.
- Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore. Parish church of Candelo next to the Ricetto, on the centro storico side of the town.
How to get to Candelo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Novara is roughly 54 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the Baraggia into bloom and the Ricetto walls dry enough for the swallows. September and October are the harvest months on the Cervo plain, with vineyards on the Coste della Sesia turning to gold. July and August can sit humid in the river basin; the cellule, half-underground in places, hold cool inside even when the piazza is hot.
Gattinara
Why visit Gattinara
Gattinara sits on the right bank of the Sesia, north of Vercelli, in the Alto Piemonte wine zone where Nebbiolo is called Spanna. The hills behind the town are volcanic, the surface gravel pushed up when Africa met Europe and built Monte Rosa sixty million years ago.
Romans planted vineyards here in the second century BC. In 1242, the commune of Vercelli established a borgofranco that became the modern town.
In the early sixteenth century Cardinal Mercurino Arborio di Gattinara, Grand Chancellor to Emperor Charles V, served the local wine at his diplomatic dinners in Spain and Flanders; it stayed a court favorite for decades. The Torre delle Castelle, tenth-century watchtower above the vineyards, still stands on the ridge.
Gattinara became Italy's twentieth DOCG in 1990. The wine is at least ninety percent Nebbiolo, aged three years in wood for the riserva, and the bottles age longer than most Barolo because the volcanic minerality slows everything down.
What to see in Gattinara
- Torre delle Castelle. Tenth-century watchtower on the ridge above the vineyards, part of a fortified system that guarded the wine hills.
- Castello di San Lorenzo. Medieval fortress on the hill, paired with the Torre delle Castelle as the upper defensive line.
- Chiesa di San Pietro. Parish church in the historic center, the religious anchor of the borgofranco founded in 1242.
How to get to Gattinara
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Novara is roughly 45 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the best months. The vineyards green up by Easter and the wine roads through the hills are walkable without heat. Harvest in late September pulls visitors to the cellars.
Biella
Why visit Biella
Biella sits at 417 meters at the foot of the Biellese Alps, in a basin where fast Alpine streams cut down from Mont Mars and the Oropa range. The statutes of 1245 already named the woolworkers' and weavers' guilds, and the city built itself around them: by the nineteenth century, vertical mills along the streams had turned Biella into the Manchester of Italy.
The names still on the labels, Zegna, Cerruti, Loro Piana, Piacenza, Fila, were founded here. The upper town, Biella Piazzo, sits above the modern Piano on a small hill, reached since 1885 by a water-counterbalance funicular that still runs the same 60-meter climb.
The Romanesque Baptistery on Piazza Duomo is the city's oldest stone, ninth or tenth century, set next to the cathedral. Above the city, the Sacro Monte di Oropa belongs to the UNESCO Sacri Monti site, and Biella was named a UNESCO Creative City for Crafts and Folk Art in 2019.
What to see in Biella
- Biella Piazzo. Medieval upper town on a small hill above the modern Piano, with arcaded palazzi and narrow stone streets, reached by funicular since 1885.
- Funicolare del Piazzo. Historic funicular opened in December 1885, covering a 60-meter altitude gradient in 177 meters between Via Curiel and Via Avogadro.
- Battistero di Biella. Romanesque baptistery on Piazza Duomo, ninth to tenth century, the oldest standing monument in the city.
How to get to Biella
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Novara is roughly 63 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings green pastures on the Biellese Alps and clean light off the streams that built the mills. September and October are the dry, gold months, when the chestnut woods around Oropa turn and the textile fairs run in town. July and August stay cooler than the Po Valley but can sit humid; the upper Piazzo holds breeze that the Piano does not.
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