The capital of the most easterly province in Piedmont shares with nearby Vercelli not just a strategic position that makes it easy to reach, but also and above all the tradition of rice. 
Squeezed between a strip of land and the rice fields, between the Sesia and the Ticino, between its streets there's a particular atmosphere characterised by the Piedmontese precision and the Milanese liveliness.
Tradition and history are the protagonists of a city on a human scale, in which finding your way is guaranteed by the soaring dome of San Gaudenzio, a masterpiece by Alessandro Antonelli.
Visitors can discover a new, stimulating form of tourism at Novara, which runs on two parallel tracks and offers an exceptionally rich tradition of gastronomic goodness and unique flavours to try in a nineteenth century drawing room, rich with artistic and historical beauty.
Then, on to a tour of the most famous monuments, from the Basilica di Santa Ortensia to the medieval Broletto, and you cannot miss a trip into taste, to discover the culinary culture linked to ancient recipes featuring strong yet simple flavours. 
And the star is obviously going to be rice in the thousands of ways it can be prepared (starting with the extraordinary paniscia), the wines from the hills, the salumi (including the salam d'la duja, exquisitely soft from being preserved in lard, in characteristic earthenware pots), the frogs, fished in summer, the "meliga" bread, made with corn flour, the desserts (like the typical D'Annunzio biscuits loved by so many and "San Gaudenzio's bread") and the gorgonzola, for which the province has become the homeland and the biggest national producer. It's natural, then, that the city and its surroundings should offer, as well as quality hotels, innumerable restaurants, trattorie, osterie and agricultural firms: small temples to cooking and tradition.