Spring Season Starts With The Reopening Of The Borromean Properties

Monday, March 15, 2010

Spring Season Starts With The Reopening Of The Borromean Properties

7:28 PM |

Dana Kaplan, Stresa Sights |

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It's here! It's here!

Springtime has arrived in Stresa. And with it, the 2010 tourist season officially begins, next Saturday, March 20, with the reopening of the Borromean properties on Isola Bella, Isola Madre, and Il Rocco at Angera. Following that, on Friday March 26, the gates of the botanical garden Villa Taranto in Verbania will also be unlocked.The tiny patches of snow that still remain on the ground will soon disappear, and instead, almost as if by magic, spring's bounty will be bloom everywhere. Here’s what you’ll see in these first weeks:

Isola Madre in her spring slendor, with snow still on the mountains beyond.

On Isola Madre, in the grand nineteenth century park, visitors can walk among the camellia, magnolia, and orchids that have been collected from around this world, learn how and when they first made their journey here, and why this is such an ideal habitat for them. Step inside the palace to discover the Borromean collection of antique marionettes, and at the end of the tour through the house, relax and feel the warmth of the sun while sitting in the original glass greenhouse.

Welcoming Spring in the terraced garden of Isola Bella.

Isola Bella will attend to her visitors as usual, charming them with her Baroque style palace and gardens. At this time of year the terraces will be blooming with camellia, azalea, and rhododendrons. The palace, as always, offers its series of wondrous rooms, filled with furnishings, tapestries, and paintings of great worth. Not to be missed is the Galleria dei Quadri, or the Galleria del Generale Berthier, both reopened in 2008, together with the Sala del Trono, after a long restoration, where 130 paintings are now displayed, arranged as they had originally been, along with their large, ornately carved frames that are an integral part of the walls of the galleries.

One wall of the 15th century fortress Rocaa di Angera

And finally, big news from the Rocco di Angera. Ready for this season, a medieval garden has been completed, offering a magical look at the Middle Ages. The new garden has been excavated around the rocky buttresses fronting Lago Maggiore, and visitors will find it an agreeable spot to stop and meditate on the surroundings. Guests to the Rocco can also visit, as in previous years, il Museo della Bambola e del Giocattolo, il Museo degli Automi, and the Museo delle Ceramiche, museums dedicated to dolls and games, robots, and ceramics. And new for 2010, a show built around the theme of medieval gardens.

All the Borromean properties on the islands and at the Rocco di Angera are open every day during the season, until late October, from 9.30 until 17.30. One exception, the Quadreria dell’Isola Bella is open instead from 9.00 to 13.00, and then again from 13.30 to 17.00 each day.

Grazie to Stresa 2.0 and La Prealpina for this information.