The water that healed and the water that vanished

For centuries the spring drew pilgrims, travellers and country folk alike. According to popular belief the water cured the sick who bathed in it—the chronicler Cotta wrote that the ill came away having regained their "longed-for health"—and, when sprinkled in faith on the fields, it could summon rain in times of drought and rid the crops of locusts and other vermin. Even a story of the source suddenly stopping while a woman washed her clothes at its mouth, then gushing back after prayers and a sacred rite, only deepened the devotion here.↗

That devotion grew so far that the Novara bishop Odescalchi—later Pope Innocent XI—is remembered having visited the oratory more than once. The shrine's fame travelled too: a 17th-century account tells of an abbot advising that tormented sufferers be brought to this very spot, where, through Saint Julius's intercession, countless were said to be set free.↗

The fountain's most modern mystery came later. For years the ancient spring simply ran dry, no one able to say why—hidden landslips, shifts in the ground or old channels diverted by human hands. Then, in 2009, during works to recover and reopen the area, the water burst forth again exactly where it had always flowed, without any targeted intervention on the source. Geology or miracle, the question still colours the romance of a visit.

What you'll see: the oratory and its sacred spring

The church that shelters the fountain is a small, intimate 16th-century building set in a tight, green valley that falls toward the lake, a spot that strikes visitors with a mix of awe and charm typical of sacred places. A date cut into stone marks the flagstoned lane built in 1702 that still leads down from the village of Opagliolo to the door.↗

In front of the oratory stands a little portico (portichetto), once frescoed with figures of saints, raised by a single step and open at the front and along one side through arches bounded by a low wall. It is beneath this portico that the venerated source wells up—still a focus of devotion, tied to the thaumaturgic action of Saint Julius, and still approached by the faithful who draw its fresh water from the living rock.↗

Inside, a single nave leads to the altar, surmounted by a much-weathered fresco of the Madonna shown among saints. The little shrine fell into near-abandonment by the 1970s, but was tidied and restored in 1984 through the efforts of the parish priest Don Giacomo Bagnati and the local community—returning it to something of its old splendour.

Adding it to a Lake Orta walk

The fountain sits where the hillside villages of San Maurizio d'Opaglio meet the lake, on the old western "Riviera" that for centuries looked to the island of San Giulio for its faith—villages like Opaglio and Alpiolo long stayed devoted through this very fountain oratory. That history gives the stop a depth beyond its size: it is a surviving thread in the lake's oldest religious map.

It also rewards walkers. From the area around Punta Casario, just along the paths that link Opagliolo to the waterfront, a pinewood and a small pebbled shore open up views across the water to San Giulio island. The fountain lane, the lake path and the hillside frazioni together make a gentle scenic loop on the western shore.