Discover Biella: Piazzo, Art and Historic Paths

Biella combines a distinctive historic district with art, architecture and paths along the water. Piazzo is the higher-lying district of Biella and dates back to 1160. If you are looking for an Italian city with organically developed architectural forms and diverse cultural perspectives, Biella offers an unusually rich selection for this.

Piazzo and the architecture of Biella

Piazzo is home to the Chiesa di San Giacomo, the district’s oldest surviving medieval building. The Duomo preserves remnants of 15th-century frescoes. Around Piazza Cisterna are the Portici del Piazzo, with characteristic medieval arcades. Their modules each consist of two bays; stone capitals and decorations made of terracotta bands define the architectural details.

Individual religious buildings also make the city’s history legible through their forms, without requiring you to focus on a single era. The Battistero has an intricate floor plan with four semicircular apses attached to the sides of a central square. The Campanile di Santo Stefano has a square floor plan, nine superimposed levels and is 52.60 metres high. Inside the Chiesa e Chiostro di San Sebastiano, a Latin-cross floor plan meets a barrel vault decorated with coffers.

Art and history in one place

In a chapel of the left aisle of San Sebastiano, a 16th-century fresco depicts the Crucifixion with a representation of the city of Biella in the background. The Museo del Territorio is located in the cloister of the Basilica di San Sebastiano. Its archaeological section ranges from palaeontology to the Middle Ages, while the historical-artistic section extends from the Renaissance to collecting in the 20th century. This allows you to view natural history, archaeology and art history in a cultural context.

Cittadellarte is located in the premises of the former Lanificio Trombetta textile factory. The former factory is an exemplary testimony to industrial archaeology in Biella’s historic textile centre; Cittadellarte exhibits works by the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. Palazzo La Marmora in the historic Borgo of Piazzo offers another way to engage with the history of Piazzo. The house museum was shaped by 17 generations of the Ferrero della Marmora family and had been owned by the Ferrero family since the 14th century.

Gardens, water and paths

Palazzo Gromo Losa has an Italian rose garden with various rose varieties, a long pergola, boxwood hedges and water basins. East of the historic centre, the short circular route “Biella e l'acqua” runs along the Torrente Cervo and passes through an area of industrial archaeology. In this compact thematic area, you encounter garden culture, a riverside landscape and the city’s industrial past.

The Sentiero Gorgomoro Biella-Oropa includes a historic mill with a forge as well as a teledynamic system for generating and transmitting hydraulic energy. The path begins in the Riva district; route D1 initially follows the Torrente Oropa and then leads into a forest. This distinction is helpful for your planning: the paths described connect water, forest and the history of technology, but begin at different points in the city.

Biella as an individual travel base

Cittadellarte is located about 2 kilometres from Biella San Paolo railway station. The station is regularly served by direct trains from Santhià and Novara. When choosing your accommodation in Biella, you can therefore consider your own priorities: historic Piazzo, museums and religious buildings, gardens and art, or the paths along the Torrente Cervo and Torrente Oropa. The cultural sites and the different trail themes each give your journey a different rhythm.

Further destinations for planning your trip

If you are planning your journey beyond Biella, you can find further places here: Graglia, Caprile, Romagnano, Magnano, Cerrione, Vivaro, Campiglia Cervo and Cossato.

To the higher-level travel overview: Biella.