Quarna Sopra

Quarna Sopra stands above Omegna, on a shelf over Lake Orta, and the first certain documents about the settlement date from the twelfth century. The old core is the Cantun Zura, centred on Piazza Pasquer, where the credenza, the council of village elders, once met; the small church of San Rocco opens onto it. In the municipal arms, parted diagonally blue and silver, a black wolf crosses a green pine's trunk.

In the parish church of Santo Stefano the Serassi workshop installed a large organ in the early eighteenth century, later restored by the Mentasti brothers of Novara and reckoned among the foremost in Piedmont for size and importance. Just outside the village, Monte Gioco is a circular structure probably of Celtic origin, held to be a sacred place where astronomical observations for the farming and grazing calendar were also made. Under Fascism Quarna Sopra was merged with Quarna Sotto into one commune called Quarna: eight village women objected to the forced union and were jailed for a month.