WITH “RISÒ” AND THE “WHITE ASCOM NIGHT,” VERCELLI IMPLEMENTS TRAFFIC CHANGES FROM SEPTEMBER 11–13 AND ADDS EXTRA SHUTTLE SERVICES!

For the 2nd edition of “Risò”—scheduled from Friday, September 11, to Sunday, September 13—and the “White Ascom Night” event on Saturday, September 12, there will be changes to traffic arrangements:

Traffic closures and parking restrictions will be in effect on specific days and times during the festival; full details are available in the announcement from the Municipality of Vercelli.

Additionally, an extra local shuttle service will operate throughout the festival to make it easier for people to attend the event.

The service will be free of charge, running between the Carrefour and Bennet parking lots and the train station (round trip), using 45- to 49-seat buses. Full information can be found in the Municipality of Vercelli’s announcement.

A DELICIOUS INITIATIVE IN VERCELLI AND THE SURROUNDING AREA!

In Vercelli, from March 27th to June 21st, pizza is the star of the first edition of the “Pizza Show” competition, an initiative by ASCOM and FIPE involving several pizzerias in Vercelli and the surrounding area!

How does it work? From March 27th to June 21st, the pizzerias participating in the “Pizza Show” initiative will offer a gourmet pizza on their menus. By ordering the featured pizza, customers will receive a stamp on their “Pizza Show” contest card. Once they’ve sampled five gourmet pizzas from five different pizzerias, they can enter the final draw to win one of three prizes:

First prize – An MSC Cruises cruise for 2 people

Second prize – A 75″ Ultra HD 4K LED TV

Third prize – An Atala Discovery FS 21V bicycle

A delicious and fun initiative! To discover the participating pizzerias and their menus, visit the Ascom Vercelli page or follow the Pizzashowvc Instagram page.

The new dates for the International Rice Festival have been revealed: September 11-14, 2026. Following the success of the first edition, this year will once again feature institutional representatives, producers, new collaborations, talks, and events for all tastes.

“VERCELLAE HOSPITALES” MARKS THE 800TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF SAINT FRANCIS

An important recognition for the third edition of “Vercellae Hospitales,” which will be held from April 10 to 19, 2026.

The event has received the official patronage of the National Committee for the Celebration of the 800th Anniversary of the Death of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Among other events, the Medieval Book Fair, a prestigious collateral event of the Turin International Book Fair, returns to the Arca Exhibition Center.

In conjunction with the event, the exhibition “…And He Preached Well: The Strength of the Franciscans in Vercelli. Research Hypothesis” will be held from April 10 to May 3.

The complete program of Vercellae Hospitales is finally available on the official website!

More information on the Municipality of Vercelli website

A new initiative from the museums in the MUVV network:

“4 Reduced for 1 Full Price” – by presenting your full-price ticket purchased at one of the museums in the MUVV network at the ticket office, you will be entitled to a reduced-price ticket at the other museums.

The museums in the MUVV network are:

Museo Leone in Vercelli;

Archaeological Museum of the City of Vercelli;

Francesco Borgogna House Museum;

Duomo Treasury Museum Foundation;

Palazzo dei Musei;

Pinacoteca di Varallo;

Calderini Museum in Varallo.

With the arrival of winter, Vercelli’s museums are taking a few days off for the holidays.

Here are all the closure notices:

Leone Museum and MAC – Archaeological Museum of Vercelli

Closed to the public from Monday, December 22, to Tuesday, January 6, 2025 – reopening January 7, 2025

Winter hours: from November 2 to March 31, 2026: Tuesday to Friday from 3:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.;
Saturday and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Francesco Borgogna Museum

Closed to the public on Monday, December 8;

Closed to the public from December 22 to 25;

Closed to the public from December 29 to January 2, 2026;

Closed to the public from January 13 to 20, 2026;

Closed to the public from February 10 to 17, 2026.

Winter hours: Closed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; open Thursday from 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.; open Friday from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.; open Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (continuous hours).

Duomo Treasury Museum

Closed to the public from December 20 to January 6, 2026

Winter hours: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.; Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. / 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.; Sunday 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

A new devotional route has been presented, connecting Vercelli and Varallo through the churches that symbolize the two cities: the Basilica of Sant’Andrea in Vercelli and the Sacro Monte di Varallo. It is a journey of faith, history, and nature along the Sesia River, suitable for all walkers. It is a collaboration between the associations Cammino del Sesia, Amici della via Francigena, and Consulta 1219.

The route, which is easy and suitable for all types of walkers, is divided into four stages: Vercelli–Greggio, Greggio–Gattinara, Gattinara–Borgosesia, and Borgosesia–Varallo.

Online advance ticket sales are now open for the exhibition “Guttuso, De Pisis, Fontana… Italian Expressionism.”

The exhibition “Guttuso, De Pisis, Fontana… Italian Expressionism” will take place at the ARCA exhibition center in Vercelli from September 11 to January 11, 2026, and will feature 46 masterpieces of Italian Impressionist art.

You can book your admission to the exhibition on the website www.ticket.it.

For more information, visit the Vercelli City website.

With the arrival of winter, Vercelli’s museums are changing their opening hours and taking a few days off for the holidays.

Here are all the closure notices and the new opening hours:

Leone Museum and MAC and Archaeological Museum of Vercelli

Closure to the public on Friday 1 November 2024

Winter opening hours from 1st November to 31st March 2024: Tuesday to Friday from 3.00 p.m. to 5.30 p.m;

Saturday and Sunday from 10.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. and from 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

Francesco Borgogna Museum

Closed to the public on Friday 1 November 2024

Christmas closure from Saturday 21 December 2024 to Monday 6 January 2025 inclusive. Reopening Tuesday 7 January 2025.

Regular opening hours: Mondays closed; Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.; Thursdays open 1.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.; Saturdays open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (regular opening hours).

Cathedral Treasury Museum

Closed to the public on Friday 15 and Saturday 16 November 2024

Christmas closure from 21 December 2024 to 6 January 2025 – reopening on 8 January 2025

Regular opening hours: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 15 – 18; Saturday 10 – 12 / 15 – 18; Sunday 15 – 18

It was announced a few days ago during the Ente Nazionale Riso conference at the G7 Agricoltura di Ortigia: in 2025, Vercelli will host the International Rice Fair entitled ‘Risò’!

The fair will involve, in addition to the Municipality of Vercelli, various organisations and entities in the area and beyond, and will take place in September.

Summer is coming to an end, with September we return to everyday life, and in Vercelli even the museums reopen their doors after the summer closure! Here are the reopening dates of the city’s museums. Leone Museum: 31 August 2024 MAC – Archaeological Museum of the City: 31 August 2024 Burgundy Museum: 3 September 2024 Cathedral Treasure Museum: 28 August 2024 And with the museum reopenings, interesting news and cultural events will also resume! Stay updated by visiting the upcoming events page on our website.

An exhibition dedicated to Giacomo Manzù in Vercelli

the exhibition

A major retrospective dedicated to Giacomo Manzù is open to the public in Vercelli from until May 21st. The exhibition, curated by Marta Concina, Daniele De Luca and Alberto Fiz and realised by the City of Vercelli, the Archdiocese of Vercelli, Studio Copernico in collaboration with the Manzù Foundation, will be hosted at Arca and at the former church of San Vittore.

The title chosen is “Giacomo Manzù. La scultura è un raggio di luna” (Giacomo Manzù. The sculpture is a moonbeam), which takes up a quotation by Cesare Brandi. Brandi, who better than anyone else was an interpreter of Manzù’s language, wrote in 1983 that “sculpture revolves with many autonomous points of view, all converging in a form that is open and closed, and in its statics is dynamic because of the way it flows within itself with a Heraclitean fluency in which one cannot bathe twice”. The reference is to the series of works dedicated to the young model Thebes, but it can be extended to Manzù’s entire body of work, which has been able to combine the classical dimension with the naturalistic and phenomenological, finding its own autonomous expressive force since the 1930s.

the works

The exhibition proposed in Vercelli brings together over thirty sculptures, some of them monumental, made available by the Manzù Foundation, the Copernico Studio and important private collectors.The itinerary ranges from the 1940s to 1990, a year before his death.

The exhibition, set up in the two venues of Arca and the former church of San Vittore, highlights the topicality of a great master of plastic art by following the different themes that characterise his poetics. Thus, the choice of works allows us to appreciate female portraits, still lifes (just think of Sedia con Aragosta –Chair with Lobster– from 1966) as well as the famous Cardinals, his most famous series begun in the 1930s. “The first time I saw the Cardinals,” said Manzù, “was in St. Peter’s in 1934; they impressed me with their rigid yet vibrant masses of complex spirituality. I saw them as statues, a series of aligned cubes, and the impulse to create my own version of that ineffable reality in sculptures was irresistible’.

In the exhibition, alongside a number of historical bronze Cardinals from the 1940s, there is also Seated Cardinal, a monumental work over two metres high modelled in 1983, from which the hieratic component of the figure emerges within rigid and synthetic pyramid-like forms.

His wife Inge, whom he met in 1954 when Manzù was teaching at the Salzburg Academy and who has been his muse ever since, is a constant in his portraiture, and on display in Vercelli is Busto di Inge (Bust of Inge), a rare work in marble created in 1979 from which emerges an extraordinary vitalism in a composition that takes on a circular form in which the arms are arranged around the woman’s face. Inge gave birth to their two children Giulia and Mileto, this became the occasion to create a series of sculptures on the theme of play: Giulia and Mileto in carrozza (Giulia and Mileto in a carriage) appears in the exhibition with the bronze sketch of 1967. These works are part of the Spielerei cycle where Manzù freely proposes a series of plastic inventions that in this case give him the opportunity to create an archaic carriage dominated by a large wheel.

The experimentation also passes through Donna che guarda (Woman looking), another monumental work dated 1983, 252 centimetres high, sculpted in ebony, a material that, as Manzù says, “is beautiful, very hard, it has like blood in its veins, it can be worked like ice but it is eternal”, a work that was already present in ARCA when the exhibition was presented.

In such a multifaceted journey, mention should also be made of Fauno modellato (Faun modelled) in 1968 where the attitude of the man with folded limbs expresses the power and energy of the body, as well as Il Miracolo di San Biagio (The Miracle of Saint Blaise), a strongly intimist work in which a compassionate Cardinal makes an appearance. “From the Vercelli exhibition therefore emerge,” comments Alberto Fiz, “the different souls of a sculptor who, without rhetoric, became an interpreter of humanity, knowing how to grasp the profound sacredness even in the everyday: ‘Manzù’, writes Brandi, ‘is in his time, outside his time, firmly anchored to those eternal values that he has never forgotten'”.

info e tickets

The exhibition is open to the public from Thursday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. from 10 March to 21 May 2023. Further information about the exhibition and the purchase of tickets is available at www.manzuvercelli.it.

GUIDED TOURS (Italian only)
Every Sunday from 26 March until the end of the exhibition it is possible to discover the exhibition and the city of Vercelli by taking part in a guided tour. Guided tours must be booked with ATL – Terre dell’Alto Piemonte at the following contacts: 335.7096337 or infovercelli@atlvalsesiavercelli.it.

EXHIBITION GUIDED TOUR EXHIBITION (Italian only)
Meeting at 2 p.m. at ARCA and scheduled departure at 2.15 p.m. The guided tour will last approximately 45 minutes at a cost of €5, plus the “reduced” exhibition fee of €5, to be paid directly at the ARCA ticket office. Total price 10€.

GUIDED TOUR EXHIBITION + CITY TOUR (Italian only)
meeting at 3 p.m. at ARCA and scheduled departure at 3.15 p.m. The guided tour will last approximately 2h15′ at a cost of €10, to which must be added the “reduced” cost of the exhibition of €5, to be paid directly at the ARCA ticket office. Total price 15€.

Discover all the exhibition venues of the diffuse exhibition!