Omegna - Lake Maggiore & Lake Orta Travel Guide

The largest town on Lake Orta is Omegna, with around 16,000 inhabitants, at the northern end of the lake on the railway line from Novara to Domodossola.

Omegna developed into the most important industrial centre on Lake Orta, and the town market on Thursdays also shows its importance as a trading centre. Industrial companies and factories settled to the north of the residential areas, so Omegna has today largely merged with Crusinallo.

In the industrial area around Crusinallo di Omegna are the well-known factories of Alessi, Lagostina and Piazza, with factory outlets selling their world-famous products at good prices.


The residential districts, with villas, palazzi, gardens and parks, lie mainly along the lakeshore and in the hills. The town centre of Omegna comprises the district between Piazza Orseline and Piazza Parrocchiale and the adjoining alleyways, some corners of which are reminiscent of Venice.

A walking tour of the town should begin at the town hall, built in 1848 by Andrea Nobili, where the Nigoglia leaves the lake and flows through the town centre.

The collegiate church of St Ambrose, founded as early as the 10th century and renewed in the 13th, impresses with its magnificent late Romanesque bell tower, which dates from that period. Alterations and extensions have been made continuously from the Renaissance to the present day, but a number of parts of the building still date from those early times.

Particularly impressive on the choir wall is a polyptych dated 1547 by Fermo Stella, "Virgin and Child with Saints".

Opposite this church stands the Oratorio di S. Giovanni Battista, originally a Romanesque building, extended and completed in the Renaissance, with a small nave and a polygonal apse.


Unlike other parts of Lake Orta, Omegna was always under changing secular rulers (Visconti, Borromeo, Kingdom of Savoy). The name of the town goes back to the Roman military station Voemoenia, later Eumoenia.

At 490 m on the west shore lies the popular village of Agrano. It now belongs to Omegna, was already settled in Roman times (Agranus), and is first mentioned in documents in 1032. In Agrano the parish church of SS. Maiolo and Leandro is worth a visit, and from Agrano you can walk to Mottarone in about 2.5 hours.

Traffic in Omegna is kept within bounds, now that through traffic is routed around the town via a long road tunnel.

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