Ornavasso

Ornavasso sits on the Toce river, just upstream from Gravellona, at the southern threshold of the Val Grande National Park. The marble quarries above the town, on the right bank of the Ossola valley opposite the famous Candoglia, supplied stone for the Duomo di Milano from the late 1300s, and later for the Arco della Pace, the façade of the Certosa di Pavia and the Octagon of the Duomo di Pavia. Two pre-Roman necropolises dug here held Celtic and Italic tombs from between the second century BC and the first century AD.

From the fifteenth century to the late 1800s the town and its frazione Migiandone formed the southernmost Walser language island in the Ossola, settled by colonists from the Simplon. The Santuario della Madonna del Boden, founded in 1530 after a miracle attributed to a local shepherdess, stands above the centro. During the Second World War, Ornavasso was the base of the Valtoce partisan division.