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This sprawling modern town was once a stronghold of the Borromeo family, but its fortress was razed by Napoleon. The only lasting monument to the great family is a disconcertingly enormous 17th-century bronze statue of San Carlo Borromeo. Clamber up a ladder-like stair to the head of the 23-m (75-ft) colossus to peek out through his pupils at the 17th-century church below. The road leading to this shrine was meant to be lined with 15 devotional chapels, but only two were finished.

This medieval castle, a Borromeo fortress since 1449, preserves a hall of crude frescoes (1342–54), which count among the oldest surviving Lombard-Gothic works on a non-religious subject. Wooden staircases lead to the tower and lake views. Most of the rooms now house a Doll Museum, with its splendid collection of Japanese figures and 18th- and 19th-century European examples (see Rocca di Angera, Lake Maggiore).

Rocca di Angera

The gateway to the Isole Borromee is a pretty lakeside burg that offers hotels, a grid of trattoria-lined pedestrian streets and quite a good summer music festival (see Settimane Musicali, Stresa). Just south of town, the Villa Pallavicino has a botanical garden and small zoo.

In thanks for being saved from a shipwreck in the 13th century, a local merchant built a chapel into the cliff face above the treacherous, deepest part of the lake. There are some frescoes, but the greatest attraction is the setting itself (see Santa Caterina del Sasso, Lake Maggiore).

From the 1650s to today, the trio of tiny islands in the middle of Lake Maggiore has drawn admirers for the gracious palaces and ornate gardens built by the Borromeo family, who still own everything but the fishing village on Isola Superiore. The islands are among Lombardy’s top attractions (see Lake Maggiore’s Isole Borromee).

Gardens, Isole Borromee

In 1939 Mussolini gave the ancient Roman name “Verbania” to a group of villages here that include little Suna, industrialized Intra and Pallanza, an important town in the Middle Ages. Pallanza’s main sight is the landscaped garden of Villa Taranto (see Villa Taranto, Lake Maggiore), while its Palazzo Viani-Dugnani houses a collection of landscape paintings.

The name “Riviera” is apt, for this sheltered promontory has a truly Mediterranean clime, enabling citrus trees and camellias to flourish, despite its relatively northern locale. The lake vistas, steep medieval streets and 18th-century houses give it a pleasant feel. Most striking are the scraps of islands just offshore, sprouting glowering castles built by lake pirates in the 1400s (see Lake Maggiore) and used by the Borromeo clan as a defensive line against the Swiss.

By the Swiss border at the base of a rushing mountain stream near the pretty Orrido di Santa Anna gorge, Cannobio dates back more than 3,000 years, though its steep, crooked pebble lanes and old plastered buildings are mainly medieval. The harbour is filled with restaurant tables in summertime.

Locarno’s neighbouring town on the Swiss end of the lake has been a favourite haunt of such cultural giants as Kandinsky, Freud and Thomas Mann. It has a split personality: there’s a Harley rally and Jazz festival in July, and a Rolls Royce gathering and classical music concerts in September. The streets are lined with topend boutiques and sights such as the 16th-century church Santi Pietro e Paolo. Up on the mountainside is Monte Verità. From the late 1800s to the 1940s this was a utopian community of “air-light” wooden structures that housed artists, vegetarians and nudists.

Sadly, most of this Swiss city capping the northern end of the lake was rebuilt along modern Swiss lines of concrete, glass and steel. What remains of the medieval city, however, is worth crossing the border for. The 14th-century Castello Visconteo is a highlight, as is the Santuario della Madonna del Sasso (1497), which preserves paintings by Bramantino and Ciseri (avoid the long climb by taking the cable car). The Arps (20th-century artists Jean, Hans and Margherita) donated many works to a modern art gallery installed in the 17th-century Casa Rusca.