Agrate Conturbia: Fifteen Things Not Everyone Knows
Article by Fulvio Julita
Those who live here never simply call themselves "from Agrate Conturbia": people say Agratesi or Conturbiesi, depending on which of the village's two souls they feel closer to. It's the first sign of a place that, beneath the appearance of a small Piedmontese municipality, holds far more stories than it lets on at first glance. Stories of Romans and a French football king, of golf played here as early as the nineteenth century, and of field hockey teams in a country entirely devoted to football. Fifteen of them, to be precise, gathered here to discover Agrate Conturbia from angles rarely told.
1. Two Souls, One Name Since 1863
Historians believe Agrate was a Roman outpost, possibly home to the Fifth Legion commanded by Pallas, a friend of the emperor Caligula. Conturbia is thought to have even older roots, as a pile-dwelling settlement in the pre-Alpine marshes. In the Middle Ages, each of the two villages had its own castle and its own feudal lords, and it wasn't until 1863 that administrative union created the municipality of Agrate Conturbia. It was a union more on paper than in practice: the good-natured rivalry that still distinguishes those who feel closer to one origin or the other isn't a recent whim, but the mark of two histories that have coexisted for more than a century and a half without ever truly merging — a cultural richness, before it's an administrative detail.
2. A Football Pitch Each: The Lowest Population Density Around
Walking through the streets of Agrate Conturbia, you notice an unusual amount of space for the Piedmontese plain: isolated farmhouses, fields stretching as far as the eye can see, houses scattered rather than clustered together. It's not just an impression: with around 1,500 residents across more than 14 square kilometres, the population density is just above 100 people per square kilometre — less than half the provincial average of around 270. In practice, every resident could theoretically claim almost an entire football pitch for themselves. Such low density is typical of remote areas, and here it's even more surprising: we're only a few kilometres from urban centres and from Lake Maggiore, yet there's no crowding and no traffic — only the quiet of small woods and farmhouses dotting the landscape.
3. Michel Platini's Grandfather Was Born Here
Michel Platini, a legend of French football, has roots in Conturbia that few people know about: his paternal grandfather, Francesco Platini, was born right here in Agrate Conturbia and emigrated to France after the First World War. The bond with the village was never broken: as an adult, Michel returned several times to visit relatives, in particular a cousin who lived in Conturbia until her death in 2014. Whenever he passed through Italy, he never failed to visit her — partly for a delicious reason: "My cousin's risotto is unbeatable, it's absolutely worth the trip!" he would joke. Between a family lunch and an affectionate goodbye, even a European champion kept a corner of the Novara countryside alive in his heart.
4. A Nineteenth-Century Golf Course, Before Any Other in Piedmont
Today's Golf Club Castelconturbia, a 27-hole course set in greenery, has a predecessor that many people don't know about. As early as 1898, a golf course already existed in Conturbia: it was the only one in Piedmont and one of just two in the whole of Italy. That pioneering 9-hole course was built on the initiative of local noblemen keen on the sport, and soon became an elite gathering place. It's said that even the House of Savoy played a round or two here during their hunting trips in the area. It stayed active, with mixed fortunes, until the 1960s, before falling into oblivion. But the local passion for golf never really died: in 1984 the course was reborn as today's Golf Club Castelconturbia, expanded to 27 holes and now ranked among the best in Italy. The course has already hosted the Italian Open twice, in 1991 and 1998, and its course record of 66 strokes still bears the names of José María Olazábal and Costantino Rocca — a concrete way of closing the circle with those nineteenth-century noblemen who, first in Piedmont, introduced the sport.
5. Not a Zoo, but an Ark: Parco Faunistico La Torbiera
Anyone expecting a traditional zoo at the Parco Faunistico "La Torbiera" is in for a surprise. The park was founded in 1977 around an ancient peat bog — a wetland now rare in this flat landscape — with a precise purpose: to preserve and study endangered animal species, not to entertain visitors. Across roughly 40 hectares live more than 400 animals from 130 different species, including big cats such as the Amur leopard, red pandas and cranes, all part of breeding and reintroduction programmes. Bringing children to see an Amur leopard or a red panda up close here also means explaining to them why these animals are at risk of disappearing, and what is being done about it.
6. When Agrate Conturbia Had Its Own Field Hockey Team
In the 1970s, this small village fielded its own field hockey team, A.S. Agratese, competing in the national championships — a rare feat for a rural community in a country dominated by football. The young men of Agrate, wielding curved sticks, trained on a grass pitch and took on teams from far larger towns. Matches were played in open countryside, right in the area where Villa Selva now stands. The passion ran so deep that some local players made a name for themselves nationally: Franco Curti, who started out with Agratese, went on to play for top-level clubs. For a few years the team was the village's sporting pride, and old-timers here still recall those pioneering matches with a smile.
7. The Baptistery of San Giovanni: Stone and Half-Light
Next to the parish church of San Vittore stands a small stone building that few people notice: the Baptistery of San Giovanni Battista, the oldest monument in the village. Its lower, octagonal section rests on the remains of a Roman building and dates back to around 930; the upper section, also octagonal and decorated with Lombard arches, dates to the twelfth century. Inside, the immersion baptismal font bears witness to centuries of baptisms, and faded traces of fifteenth-century frescoes still cover the walls. It's a hushed, intimate space where the half-light does its quiet work: as Remo Julita, mayor and local scholar, once wrote, it is "a stone relic that has crossed the centuries, a silent witness to the faith and history of Agrate." Rarely used today, it remains a place where spirituality can be felt before it is explained.
8. The Meja Stream: The Valley of the Crayfish
Along the border between Agrate Conturbia, Gattico-Veruno and Bogogno flows the Meja, a small stream that has shaped rural life here for centuries. Farmers used to call it "val di gambri" — the valley of the crayfish — for the abundance of freshwater crayfish once found in its waters; diverted channels, known as "rujon," harnessed its flow to turn mills and irrigate the fields. Today the Meja runs through an idyllic rural landscape of poplar groves and reed beds, home to wild ducks, frogs and dragonflies, and remains a quiet but essential presence — telling, better than words could, the ancient bond between this land and its water.
9. The Preja d'Argoi: A Boulder Carried by Glaciers
In a clearing in the Bosco Solivo woods lies a flat boulder some fifteen metres long, known as the Preja d'Argoi — "big stone" in dialect, also called Preja Guzza. It is an erratic boulder, carried here from far away: dragged down by prehistoric glaciers, and made of a dark green serpentine rock that doesn't belong to these hills. Such a geological anomaly could hardly avoid becoming the stuff of legend: in the past the stone was linked to fertility rites, and couples hoping for a child would perform propitiatory gestures on it. Even today, some who reach it in the silence of the woods swear they can feel something different in the air.
10. From Castle to Playground
Little remains of the walls of Agrate's medieval castle, but that little is enough to tell a story of power and lordships: on the surviving stones you can still make out the coat of arms of the Conti di Castello, the feudal lords who ruled the village around the year 1000. Partly destroyed in 1400 and altered many times over the centuries, the stronghold passed briefly to the Visconti of Milan and then to the Borromeo family, who held it until the eighteenth century. Of the ancient courtyard, what survives today is a corner turned into a public green space, enclosed by the old walls, where children now play. Where weapons and armour once clashed, the laughter of children now echoes instead — a contrast that says, better than any description, how time transforms places without erasing their memory.
11. An Official Toast: Agrate Joins the Cities of Wine
In 2024 Agrate Conturbia joined the National Association of Cities of Wine, a recognition with solid roots here: its hills host prized vineyards within the Colline Novaresi DOC, home to native grape varieties such as Nebbiolo — locally called Spanna — Vespolina, Uva Rara and Croatina. The title opens up real opportunities for promotion among an increasingly curious audience of wine tourists, as well as the chance to take part in events for the protection of the winegrowing landscape. That same year, Alto Piemonte was named a "European Wine Territory," bringing further visibility to its wines. Between future vineyard tastings and a hillside landscape worth protecting, the glass becomes one more way — alongside the table — to truly get to know this corner of Piedmont.
12. Two Festivals, Two Souls: San Vittore and Conturbia Festival
The calendar of Agrate Conturbia lights up twice a year, in two very different moods. In August, on the third Sunday of the month, the village celebrates San Vittore, its patron saint, with traditional dinners, folk dancing, raffles and the slow, familiar rhythm of a village feast. At the end of July, instead, comes the Conturbia Festival: open-air concerts, street food, young people and families gathering to toast under the stars. They are two different ways of coming together — one looking to tradition, the other to summer's freer spirit — but both tell the same story: that this community still finds real reasons to gather.
13. A Procession That Has United Two Villages for Centuries
Hidden among the greenery on the municipal border, the small church of Santa Maria in Valle dates back to 1100 and still holds, within its herringbone stone and pebble walls, fragments of sixteenth-century frescoes. But its liveliest value isn't in the stone: every summer, worshippers from Agrate Conturbia and neighbouring Bogogno gather here for a procession that converges from both villages, culminating in a solemn open-air mass. The ritual is renewed generation after generation, and in an age when municipal boundaries matter less and less, it still binds the two communities together through a gesture as old as the church itself.
14. San Giorgio: The Cross-Shaped Window Few Notice
In Conturbia, even before the year 1000, the church of San Giorgio already stood, later consecrated between 1122 and 1148 by the Bishop of Novara, Litifredo. Its original stone façade has survived the centuries almost intact, along with a rare detail: a cross-shaped window framed by an arched portal, a feature few Romanesque buildings in the Novara area can match. Surrounded by trees and still used today for occasional services, San Giorgio remains one of the most precious and least-known examples of rural Romanesque architecture in the area.
15. A Heritage Meant to Be Lived Slowly
Oak and chestnut woods, vineyard-covered hills, trails where squirrels and roe deer move undisturbed: just 50 kilometres from Milan, Agrate Conturbia preserves a landscape that has vanished elsewhere. It's ideal ground for slow tourism — the kind done on foot or by bicycle, perhaps along the Bosco Solivo nature reserve as far as the Preja d'Argoi, or simply by stopping in the shade of a centuries-old oak with a book and the local produce. Fifteen curiosities aren't enough to tell the whole story of a place like this: the rest is there to be discovered slowly, one step at a time, just as life is lived here.