Albano Vercellese

Albano Vercellese lies between the river Sesia and the Marchiazza torrent and houses the offices and entrance of the Lame del Sesia nature park; growing rice is still the village's main activity. The place name comes from the Roman personal name Albanus, and from Roman times a tegula with a funerary inscription survives, found in a field outside the village and studied by the archaeologist Luigi Bruzza; the village itself appears in writing only from the tenth century, in the time of Bishop Attone, among the oldest parish churches of the Vercelli see. Two imperial diplomas confirmed possession, Otto III in 999 and Frederick Barbarossa in 1152.

In the seventeenth century Duke Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy made it a county taking in Oldenico and the Cascine San Giacomo, with Mercurino Filiberto Arborio di Gattinara as regent. The municipal arms join the two things that mattered here, the lord and the fortified place: a gold lion holding a small brick-red castle, Guelph-battlemented, beneath a blue chief with four gold lilies. Of the old buildings there remain the castle, with fifteenth-century parts, and the twelfth-century oratory of the Santissima Trinità, which keeps fifteenth-century frescoes near the apse.