“…the gentle plain that slopes from Vercelli down to Marcabò” (Hell, XXVIII)
In the mountains, passes and valleys of Valsesia, the heretic Frà Dolcino and his people fought against the army sent by Raniero Avogadro, bishop of Vercelli who had launched the Crusade to capture the rebels, with the approval of Pope Clement V. Today, along the stretch of the Via Francigena that crosses the plain you reach Vercelli, a city that played a political and cultural role of primary European importance in medieval times. Today a commemorative plaque affixed in the historical centre reports the words with which Dante (Hell, XXVIII) mentions it as one of the borders of the vast Po Valley and a potentially rebellious centre to the emperor Henry VII, in the struggle between Guelph and Ghibelline factions: “for Pier da Medicina spare a thought, should you ever see that gentle plain again that slopes from Vercelli down to Marcabò”.
The only turreted city in Piedmont, Vercelli is a mosaic of art treasures of inestimable value: suffice it to mention the Vercelli Book, kept in the Cathedral Museum, the monumental Crucifix of the year 1000 in the Cathedral of Sant'Eusebio or the cycle of frescoes in the church of San Cristoforo - the Stories of the Virgin and the Stories of Mary Magdalene - and the Madonna degli Aranci altarpiece, all by Gaudenzio Ferrari. Walking along, you come to the Synagogue and the Museo Leone, the Museo Borgogna and the Viotti Theatre, home of the important international music competition. Imposing and austere, the Basilica di Sant’Andrea church is the symbol of Vercelli, built in the thirteenth century, when the city was not yet the capital of rice and the territory that today produces the only Italian PDO of the cereal (Baraggia Biellese and Vercellese rice). Here, where the Cistercian monks of the Abbey of Lucedio (Trino Vercellese) introduced the cultivation of the cereal in the fifteenth century, you can cycle along the rice and wine road on the ring route that leads from Vercelli to Gattinara, land of the robust DOCG red wine and delicious products.