Isola del Garda (Villa Borghese Cavazza)

The only inhabited island of Lake Garda is home to the Borghese Cavazza family and their Venetian neo-Gothic villa, above terraced Italian and English gardens offshore from Salò.

Why it matters

The island’s history includes a monastic community, a refuge for brigands, and later ownership by noble families who built the villa south of Salò. It remains a family residence, with a history shaped by successive generations of owners.

What to notice

• The villa, built between 1890 and 1903 to designs by architect and landscape architect Luigi Rovelli, reworks Venetian Gothic palazzi in neo-Gothic style, with crenellations and loggias facing the lake.
• The Italian garden on the central terrace fronts the villa; its modelled hedges form figures including the Borghese family emblem.
• Charlotte developed the English-style garden over more than forty years on the site of a lakeside orchard; fruit trees and caper plants remain on the lower terraces.
• Canary Island palms grow near the villa.

Context and history

A cataclysm in 243–245 detached the island from the nearby peninsula. In 879 Carloman donated it to the monks of San Zeno of Verona; until 1180 it was a refuge for brigands and smugglers. In March 1221 Biemino di Manerba gave the island to St Francis, who founded a hermitage in the north-facing caves; in 1420 St Bernardino of Siena expanded the settlement into a convent with three churches. Napoleon's Cisalpine Republic expropriated the monks in 1797, leaving the island deserted until Gaetano de Ferrari and his wife Maria Annenkova bought it in 1869 and commissioned the villa and its terraced grounds.

Their daughter Anna Maria married Scipione Borghese, Prince of Sulmona, in 1895; she planted the exotic collections that earned the island the nickname "pearl of the lake", while Scipione — winner of the 1907 Peking-to-Paris motor rally — entered racing legend. In 1924 Livia Borghese married Count Alessandro Cavazza of Bologna, uniting the names the property still carries. The island passed to their son Camillo in 1969. Its historical names record successive periods of ownership: Isola dei Frati after the Franciscan convent, then Lechi, Scotti, De Ferrari and Borghese.