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Isola Bella (Lake Maggiore)
The House of Borromeo was an influential family of Lombardi aristocrats who ruled Arona, a town on Lake Maggiore (a long prealpine lake which snakes through Lombardy and up into Switzerland). Various members of the Borromeo family played important roles in the politics of Milan and of the Catholic reformation (particularly as Archbishops), and even today they control a business empire with considerable wealth and clout.
The Gardens of Isola Bella
More importantly, however, the Borromeo family was responsible for one of the world’s most impressive residences—an immense palazzo and exquisite formal garden which take up the entirety of Isola Bella, a small island on Lake Maggiore. Isola Bella was once a rocky crag with a small fishing village on it (the whole island is only 320 metres long by 400 metres wide), however, in 1632 Carlo III set out to build a grand palace and garden on the tiny spot of land. The climate of Lake Maggiore is uncommonly mild, and the Count undoubtedly was looking forward to cool summers and warm winters on his isolated retreat. Not even rapacious aristocrats get everything they want however, and the villa’s construction was interrupted by a plague which broke out in Milan in the middle of the 17th century.
The palazzo is just another enormous beautiful Italian palace filled with sumptuous rooms, art masterpieces, and precious treasures but the tiered baroque gardens are truly remarkable. Exquisite Mediterranean plants thrive beneath a background of snow-topped Alpine peaks. Magnificent stairs and formal statuary add additional splendor to the garden.
The Shell Grotto at Isola Bella
Although aesthetes might find it difficult to pin down the most remarkable feature of this remarkable place, we here at Ferrebeekeeper have an easier task. The gardens at Isola Bella feature one of the most striking mollusk-themed rooms on Earth. The shell grotto room connects the ten-tiered garden on one side of the island with the huge mansion on the other—it is literally the linchpin of the island. The grotto was designed to provide a cool retreat from summer. The walls, ceilings, floors, and doorways are all covered with intricate murals made from shells and black pebbles. So ornate is the shell-work that it took workmen and architects a century to complete the grotto…
A different room in the grotto
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