Briga Novarese

Briga is a Celtic word and means hill. On the hill of San Colombano stood a Gallic hillfort, and later a Roman castrum: gravestones, coins and bronze bracelets have come out of the ground here, and the Roman settlement is certain from the first century BC.

When the militias of Novara destroyed the core of the castle, the Brusati put up another tower, ringed by ditches, commanding what is now via Antibo: nothing of it is left. In 1331, in the guelph and ghibelline fighting, the town was destroyed. Of the older Briga the church of San Tommaso survives instead, with frescoes from the first half of the eleventh century.