Novara - Piemonte Feel

A trip to Novara means a break from the stress and traffic you normally find in town centres… Every individual detail in the layout of the city seems to suggest that the people of Novara have chosen to live in a city tailor made for human beings. If you want to discover Novara, nothing is better than a stroll down its cobbled lanes, some shopping in the fashion stores beneath its nineteenth century colonnades, or sipping an aperitif in a historical café. There are a world of things to be discovered slowly, taking in the details of an atmosphere which talks about the past but looks towards the future. However, there is also another way to get to know the city: by bicycle. Thanks to the city’s many cycle paths, it is possible to reach all the most important sights cycling along the leafy paths within the city walls or reaching Allea – Novara’s big, green “lung”. Those who, instead, prefer to venture outside the city walls, may well be rewarded in a wood or rice field by a glimpse of a flying heron or other aquatic birds who have found a perfect habitat in the Heron Park.

Novara is also city which lives in the future, thanks to its unique geographical position – one hundred miles from Turin, less than fifty from Milan, and half an hour from Malpensa airport. It lies at a strategic crossroads of the main channels of communication between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, situated at the very opening of the pathway which leads to Eastern Europe. It is not by chance that Novara is home to one of the most important map editors in the world, De Agostini. The city is gradually taking on its future shape, thanks to the development of road and rail networks which are reinforcing the vocational identity of Novara and its surrounging area as a place of interconnections. However, since the establishment of Novara’s university, dedicated to the mathematician Amadeo Avogadri, young people have always been the main focal point of the city’s future plans.

Novara, the capital of Eastern Piedmont, is a city which should be explored slowly, on foot or by bicycle. Certain monuments are not to be missed: the octagonal Baptistery which dates back to the paleo-Christian period, the “Broletto”, which consists in a complex of medieval buildings gathered around a large courtyard (the Palazzo dei Paratici, the former headquarters of the artisans’ guilds, is host to the Civic Museum “Raccolte in Palazzo Broletto”), and the Basilica of Saint Gaudentius, designed by Pellegrino Tibaldi and built between 1577 and 1690. The masterful dome of the basilica was created between 1844 and 1888 and designed by Alessandro Antonelli, who also designed Turin’s Mole Antonelliana. Gourmets can try the “biscottini di Novara”, which are based on an ancient recipe invented in the city’s convents towards the end of 1500 - a refined delicacy to which even the poet-bard Gabriele D’Annunzio was by no means immune.

Info
Via Rosselli, 1 - 28100 Novara
Tel. +39.0321.3701 (Centralino); +39.0321.3702218 (Urp) -
Fax: +39.0321.3702207
E-mail: urp@comune.novara.it
www.comune.novara.it