Giardino Botanico dell'Isola Madre

Eight hectares of English-style planting fill Isola Madre, the largest of the Borromean Islands opposite Stresa. Where nearby Isola Bella is architecture, this island is landscape: citrus terraces, camellia walks, a wisteria-clad stairway and exotic birds strutting freely between flowerbeds, all wrapped in the soft light of Lake Maggiore.

Why it matters

The garden documents a complete change of taste. Under Count Lancillotto Borromeo the island was a working agricultural estate of vines, figs, olives and citrus; from the late 1700s the family reshaped it in the English landscape manner, trading formal beds for groves, lawns and sweeping planting. Because the island enjoys a famously mild microclimate, species from every continent grow outdoors here. Its paths and plantings change character with the seasons.

What to notice

The Viale Africa, on the island's sunny flank, is planted with subtropical and evergreen species, including bitter orange trees, laurel, cacti and aloe. Paths climb and circle through nineteenth-century landscaping: camellias and azaleas in spring, rhododendrons and magnolias above them, then oleanders and hibiscus taking over in high summer. Two features mark the later development of the garden. The scala dei morti, the "staircase of the dead" that recalls the island's medieval church and cemetery, has in recent decades been draped with a notable wisteria collection — extraordinary in April. Colourful-plumaged birds move freely through the grounds alongside the planting.

The garden's later development is also visible in its dated features. Greenhouse construction began in 1826; the family chapel, without tombs, was set into a lower garden level in 1858; orchids arrived around the turn of the 20th century. The garden records a sequence of horticultural fashions.

Context and history

The island's story starts long before the garden: Emperor Henry II granted it to the nuns of San Felice in Pavia in 1014, and a church and cemetery stood here by the mid-9th century. Around 1501 Count Lancillotto Borromeo introduced citrus cultivation with stock from Liguria and a dedicated gardener. After a generation with the Trivulzio family, the island returned to the Borromeo in 1563, and its present name may honour Margherita Trivulzio or simply mark the family's first acquisition on the lake. The English-style layout grew from that citrus orchard in the late 1700s and matured through the 19th century into the eight-hectare garden seen today.