Torre di Buccione

On the Colle di Buccione above Orta San Giulio, the stone tower is the most visible remnant of a medieval castle and a landmark overlooking Lake Orta.

Why it matters

Buccione Tower is what remains of a medieval castrum on the Colle di Buccione, the hill facing Lake Orta's western shore. First documented in a thirteenth-century record, it was likely built by the counts da Castello and later passed to the bishops of Novara. From the early 1200s onward the tower became something rarer than a military post: the emblem of the Riviera San Giulio's fierce independence, the point to which the lake communities looked when danger threatened. A fourteenth-century bell cell was added at the top, and its bell called residents of the riviera to arms and to mutual aid. Today the tower and its walled courtyard are the only survivors of the larger complex, preserved as the historical symbol of the shore it overlooks. The hill itself is protected as a nature reserve managed by the Ticino and Lake Maggiore protected areas authority, so the climb combines a monument, a panorama and a protected landscape in one short outing.

What to notice

Look at the tower's proportions before its views. It rises about 23 metres over five floors in rough stone blocks, capped by the covered, crenellated bell cell — a silhouette that reads as pure function: watch, warn, defend. The tower's upper levels and small openings reflect its defensive function. Its enclosed courtyard marks the footprint of the vanished castle, while the surrounding Colle di Buccione is a protected wooded landscape overlooking Lake Orta.

Context and history

The tower's documented life begins in the 1200s, when the castrum on the hill is first recorded; its construction is attributed by institutional sources to the counts da Castello, with ownership later held by the bishops of Novara. Its real significance, however, grew from the communal era: as the communities of the Riviera San Giulio organized themselves against feudal control, the tower on its dominant hill became their emblem — institutional descriptions call it the symbol of the riviera's proud independence. The addition of the bell cell in the fourteenth century gave the building its civic voice, ringing alarms and summoning neighbouring villages to each other's defence. Over the following centuries the castle complex declined until only the tower and its enclosed courtyard remained, and it survived precisely because it had come to mean something to the communities below. That continuity — from military watchtower to local identity — connects the building with the history of the lake shore around it.