Hotel San Rocco Orta San Giulio Lake Orta Piedmont Welcome to Italy Gallery

An apparently lonely little universe, an enchanted world held by the ancient walls of XVII century convent and bound for ages to the mysterious and fairytale-like Island of San Giulio: this is the Hotel San Rocco. Placed in one of the most picturesque corner of Italy, at a short distance from the principal cities of the North and from Switzerland, the Hotel offers the possibility to allow to oneself pleasant moments of escape from everyday life.
You will sweetly spend Your time, enjoying the quiet beauty of the cosy Lake Orta, described by Balzac as a "grey pearl" in the "green" of the Piedmont hills. Canon Angelo Fara reports in his edition of "La Riviera di San Giulio, Orta e Gozzano", published in Novara in 1861, That the central group of the present Hotel San Rocco was originally the ancestral home of the Priest Giovanni Gemelli of Orta (canon of the Island of San Giulio), who eventually in 1647 gave the San Rocco, together with a part of his land, to the foundation of the College dedicated to S. Orsola, kept by the Orsoline nuns. As a proof to this belief, up to this day, it is possible to admire an oil painting, dated 28 October 1605, placed in the Hotel hall, which is the portrait of the first Mother Superior Anna Theodora Silana, promoter of the college.
Closed and sold in 1813 with the reigning of Napoleone, the San Rocco once again became place of meditation some years later: the building, looking as architecturally similar to this day, was purchased by His Eminence Giacomo Felice Gentile, then Bishop, who formed a girl's school, under the direction of the Giuseppe nuns. For nearly 150 years, it was a seclusion convent, until the 1960 years, when the Giuseppine nuns gave it up for it to become the present Hotel.