On A26, 47 km East of Ivrea. Like many Piedmont towns it consists of a medieval nucleus with walls or traces of walls around it. Traffic goes by on the ring road, but there is plenty of commercial activity in the town. If you are ticking off the holy places, visit the 12thC basilica of Sant’ Andrea and sec the florid frescos of Gaudenzio Ferrari (he is hardly known outside the region) at San Cristoforo.

The chief interest of Vercelli lies in the landscape. This is the rice metropolis of Piedmont and south of the town, in spring, you could be among the paddy fields of the Orient. Piedmont’s economic salvation was a gridiron of canals, forming a complete irrigation scheme, laid down by Camille Cavour, Prime Minister to the King of Sardinia in the 1850s and an architect of the modern Italian state. The Cavour canal, which connects the infant Po river and the Ticino river, crosses the Aosta-Genoa autostrada near Santhia, 16 km west of Vercelli. About the same distance north, on either side of the A26 autostrada, are two little enclaves for bird-watchers: from Vercelli, a continuation of the road through Borgo Vercelli takes you into the Casalbeltrame marshes, famous for native and migratory aquatic birds; and west to Oldenico brings you to the wooded isles, sands and shingle banks of the River Sesia, home to egrets, several kinds of heron and many species of duck; and a stopover for long-distance migratory wildfowl.