page_title: Vercelli
section_title: Main sights
hierarchical_section_title: Vercelli / Main sights
caption_attribution_description: Vercelli, Basilica Sant'Andrea
context_page_description: Vercelli, is a city and comune of 46.552 inhabitants in the Province of Vercelli, Piedmont, northern Italy. One of the oldest urban sites in northern Italy, it was founded, according to most historians, around the year 600 BC.
  The city is situated on the river Sesia in the plain of the river Po between Milan and Turin. It is an important centre for the cultivation of rice, and is surrounded by rice paddies, which are flooded in the summer. The climate is typical of the Po Valley with cold, foggy winters and oppressive heat during the summer months. Rainfall is most prevalent during the spring and autumn; thunderstorms are common in the summer.
  The languages spoken in Vercelli are Italian and Piedmontese; the variety of Piedmontese native to the city is called Varsleis.
  The world's first university funded by public money was established in Vercelli in 1228, but was closed in 1372.
  Today it has a university of literature and philosophy as a part of the Università del Piemonte Orientale and a satellite campus of the Politecnico di Torino.
context_section_description: Vercelli is home to numerous relics of the Roman period, e.g. an amphitheatre, hippodrome, sarcophagi, and many important inscriptions, some of which are Christian.
  There are seven noteworthy towers in the town, most important are the Torre dell’Angelo, which rears up over the old market square, and the Torre di Città in Via Gioberti.
  Vercelli Cathedral, formerly adorned with precious pillars and mosaics, was erected and enlarged by Saint Eusebius of Vercelli, to whom it was dedicated after his death. It was remodeled as of the ninth century, and radically changed in the eighteenth by Count Alfieri. Like the other churches in the city, it contains valuable paintings, especially those of Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gerolamo Giovenone and Bernardino Lanino, who were natives of Vercelli.
  The cathedral's Capitulary Library contains valuable manuscripts.  Its religious texts include the Codex Vercellensis, an evangelarium of the fourth century; hagiographical manuscripts, not all of which have been critically examined; and a very old copy of the Imitation of Christ, which is relied upon as an argument for attributing the authorship to John Gersen.  Its secular texts include the Novels of Justinian; and the 8th-century Leges Langobardorum (Laws of the Lombards - Germanic). Finally it contains the famous Vercelli Book — an Old English manuscript which includes the celebrated alliterative poem The Dream of the Rood.  The civil archives are not less important, and contain documents dating from 882.
  The Basilica di Sant'Andrea was erected by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri in 1219.  Together with the old Cistercian monastery, it is one of the most beautiful and best-preserved Romanesque monuments in Italy. Among other noteworthy churches in the city is the Santa Maria Maggiore.
  Vercelli's synagogue, an example of Moorish Revival architecture, is located at Via Foà 70 and the city's Jewish cemetery at Corso Randaccio 24. On 23 November 2013, after what was believed to be an antisemitic act, two swastikas were found sprayed on its walls.
  The Institute of the Beaux-Arts contains paintings by Vercellese artists.
  Ancient charitable institutions continue, such as the hospital founded by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri (1224), which has an annual revenue of more than 600,000 lire ($117,000); and the hospices for orphan girls (1553) and for boys (1542), and mendicant homes.
  Vercelli is the seat of the Viotti International Music Competition.
caption: St. Andrew’s Basilica.
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