Torre di Buccione

On a hill at the southern end of Lake Orta rises the Torre di Buccione, a medieval keep that was for centuries the watchtower and rallying point of the lakeside communities. Its bell once called every able man to arms — and in 1918 it rang again to announce the end of the First World War.

Why it matters

The tower is the military counterpart to Lake Orta's sanctuaries: the stone that defended the Riviera di San Giulio through the Middle Ages, and its most recognisable silhouette after the island basilica. Excavations in 2005 rewrote its history, disproving old theories of Roman origins and revealing foundations cut directly into living rock. The tower's interior preserves the history of its role as a watchtower and rallying point.

What to notice

• The keep itself: a square-plan tower 23.20 metres tall, internally divided into five levels with wooden floors, standing inside a square curtain wall with a service building — the best-preserved part of a once larger castle.
• The masonry and the merlon-covered cell roof, which likely dates to the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
• The setting on the wooded hill at the lake's southeastern end, with wide views over the water and towards the plain of Novara — the practical reason a watchtower stood here.
• The bell and its civic history: community statutes obliged all able men to arm themselves when it sounded, and the broken bell was rung on 4 November 1918 to announce the Armistice, then annually until the Second World War, when it was moved to Orta's town hall for safekeeping and returned after restoration.
• The palisade around the site, evoking the lost medieval enclosure.

Context and history

The tower was probably built in the third quarter of the twelfth century, most likely by the conti Da Castello, though scholars long debated Roman or Lombard origins — a question the 2005 excavations settled in favour of a medieval foundation on rock. The first documentary mention comes in 1200, in an accord signed "in prato subtus castellum Buzoni" before the bishop of Novara; by 1205 it served as a bishop's residence, and from 1235 ownership is attributed to the bishop.

Its role was as much civic as military: as the symbol of the independence of the Riviera di San Giulio, its bell was the community's alarm and muster call. A major restoration concluded in 2005, when the bell returned to the tower and the site was consolidated. The keep's medieval fabric and civic bell preserve its long role in the life of the Riviera di San Giulio.