Lake Maggiore, Italy
Tim Cooke
The Borromean Islands on Italy’s Lake Maggiore are nothing short of spectacular.
The vistas are so stunning you have to look at least twice to make sure you haven’t floated off into an imaginary world.
On the Borromean Islands
Approaching Isola Bella
Isola Bella is the most splendid, the extravagance of its gardens overwhelming to both eye and imagination. You enter the gardens via a surprising and dramatic palazzo, the Palazzo Borromeo, each room unfolding like a new chapter of a compelling novel, revealing its delightful quirks in bite-sized doses.
In the Palazzo, Isola Bella
In the Palazzo, Isola Bella
Room with a view
Inside the Palazzo is a large salon dedicated to displaying a fantastical series of tapestries, woven in Brussels around 1565.
Tapestries, Isola Bella
Tapestries, Isola Bella
Out into the garden and it feels as though you’ve stepped onto the set of a Disney-esque movie – except this is the real thing.
This place drips with delights. Every view is splendidly picture book
Isola Bella
Isola Bella
Isola Bella
Ten minutes onward by boat will take you to the delights of Isola Madre, a lush and charming island with an exotic character. The gardens and palazzo here make for a great visit in their own right.
The rather less cultivated Isola dei Pescatori (island of the fishermen) is very different in character. There are no spectacular gardens here, more of a sense of a traditional fishing island, with nets drying in narrow alleys and little working boats coming and going with catches to supply the restaurants which draw in the tourists. This is where I chose to settle for a spell, enjoying the rhythms of island life and a sense of splendid isolation, most acute under the twinkle of Jupiter and Venus after evening diners from mainland towns had departed the island by motor launch, leaving island-dwellers to the sound of lapping waves under the canopy of darkness.
An utterly priceless experience.
Isola dei Pescatori
On Isola dei Pescatori
Sunset over Lake Maggiore