page_title: Ameno, Italy
section_title: Mount Mesma
hierarchical_section_title: Ameno, Italy / History / Mount Mesma
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Il convento francescano sulla cima del Monte Mesma, Ameno (NO)
context_page_description: Ameno is a comune in the Province of Novara in the Italian region of Piedmont, located about 100 kilometres northeast of Turin and about 40 kilometres northwest of Novara. As of 31 December 2004, it has a population of 906 and an area of 10.0 square kilometres.
  The word Ameno means healthy, tranquil placein Italian. The village is on the top of a hill surrounded by mountains, a lake, and brushland. Ameno contains numerous ancient homes and castles belonging to noble families from Turin and Milan who vacationed in Ameno during the summer. In addition, the municipality has the Santuario della Madonna della Bocciola. Every June, the village hosts a Blues festival in Ameno.
context_section_description: The Franciscan convent on Monte Mesma
  Parallel to the research in the necropolis areas, Giulio Decio also conducted excavation tests on the slopes of Mount Mesma, under the Franciscan monastery where brick fragments from the Roman era had been found.  The research led to the identification, in various points, of fragments of protohistoric domestic pottery in a secondary position, bronze fibulae and remains of clay fictile from the Roman period.  These discoveries led the Decio to hypothesize the presence of a built-up area on the well-stocked summit of Mount Mesma, from which the surrounding area is easily dominated.  An indirect confirmation of the strategic value of the place, centuries later, is given by the construction in the Middle Ages of a castle, probably in 1200, by the Municipality of Novara .  The present Franciscan monastery was later built on the ruins of this.  The necropolises discovered in Lortallo were located along the main access road to the town, according to a use widely attested in the early Iron Age .  The village on Mesma was the most important, but probably not the only inhabited center.  According to the use of the golasecchiano world, smaller nuclei, linked to the main by clanic constraints, had to rise on the surrounding hills. Coeval ceramic remains were in fact recovered in Lortallo and on the Buccione hill.
caption: Photo of Franciscan convent on Monte Mesma
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