THE ITALIAN MOB
Lake Maggiore is brilliant for breathtaking scenery, art and culture, but when four teenagers joined Giles Milton on holiday, he wasn’t sure it could cope with...
MRS MILTON had booked us into a tiny holiday cottage, on the grounds that it would probably just be the two of us going away. Our three daughters – Madeleine, Heloise and Aurelia – had projects of their own and viewed the idea of holidaying with their parents as an endurance e test best avoided.
Until, that is, they learned of the e destination. Italy! Lake Maggiore! ! Suddenly, there were five of us: no,, six, because Etienne, the boyfriendd of one of the girls, was coming too. . Our diminutive holiday cottagee looked set to burst at the seams.
We took the epic route to Italy: a leisurely drive through France and Switzerland, crossing the 6,000ft Simplon Pass, still studded with clods of snow even in August, before plunging down into the subtropical micro-climate of Italy’s most alluring lake.
Nothing can prepare you for your first glimpse of Lake Maggiore: a vast bowl of deep blue water ringed with a stack of mountains and a luxuriant fringe of oleanders. The climate (warm and wet) has allowed for the creation of some of the world’s most exuberant botanical gardens. It’s so spectacularly enticing that even grumpy teenagers are reduced to silence.
Our cottage was in a little place called Solcio, one of hundreds of fishing villages dotted along the shores of the lake. Solcio had one shop, two bars and a church with an over-enthusiastic bellringer. ‘Can’t he just shut up?’ said one of my daughters as the morning angelus was hammered out in a peal of clanging bronze.
‘It’s all part of the Italian charm,’ explained Mrs Milton, herself not entirely convinced by this daily wake-up.
Lake Maggiore remained off the beaten tourist track until 1906, when the Simplon Tunnel under the Alps enabled the Orient Express to start calling here. Overnight, its shores became the destination of choice for Europe’s elite, who liked it so much that they bought vast lakeside plots and constructed rambling fin de siecle villas. Some are still inhabited, but others, sadly, are in ruins, with crumbling stucco facades.
Stresa has long been the unoffi- cial capital of the lake’s western shoreline: a self-important market town that’s half-trapped in an Edwardian timewarp. The corniche is lined with grandiose palace hotels whose baroque flourishes and gilded fretwork resemble the backdrops to a Puccini opera.
GRANDEST of them all is the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees, with its bauble-dripping chandeliers. This is where the 19-year-old Ernest Hemingway stayed while convalescing from the shrapnel wounds he acquired on the Italian front line.
First among equals of Stresa’s palazzos is the baroque fantasy that belongs to the Borromeo family. It is sprawled over the little island of Isola Bella, a ten-minute boat ride from the town.
The gardens are like some sort of fantasy theme park gone mad: statues of gods and satyrs, a three-storey theatre constructed from shells and mirrors, and forests of palm trees, oleanders and topiary box trees.
The palace interior is only marginally less exuberant than the garden and is notable for its collection of freakish family portraits. These stand witness to the fact that the antecedents of the Borromeo dynasty were woefully inbred. Misshapen heads, wonky ears, absurdly huge Hapsburg noses – I’d never seen such a gallery of misfits.
Another short hop-on boat ride delivered us to Pescatori, the island of fishermen and Hemingway’s favourite bolt-hole. It’s tiny – it takes just ten minutes to make a complete circuit on foot – but its tight network of alleys are lined with perfectly dilapidated villas and restaurants.
Lake Maggiore is huge, extending
northwards all the way to Locarno in Switzerland: you could easily fill a week or more pottering through its lakeside villages with their botanical delights. But there’s another nearby attraction, one not to be missed. A 20-minute drive through the thick alpine forests of Mount del Falo brought us to a second lake, Lake Orta, which is smaller and more intimate than Maggiore.
Top beauty prize here goes to the principal town, Orta San Giulio, with its steep cobbled streets, facades the colour of old Parmesan, and a clutch of cafes that flank the main piazza. Here, too, is the so-called Miami Beach, something of a misnomer since its only 60ft long. But it’s a great place to swim, soak up the sunshine and rent pedalos.
Teenage children and medieval frescoes don’t always make for a happy combination, but there’s one sight that’s worth any amount of back-seat squabbling. Castiglione Olona lies about 45 minutes to the south-east of Lake Maggiore, and it’s here that you’ll find one of Italy’s undiscovered jewels. The little chapel is covered from floor to ceiling in frescoes by the Florentine Renaissance maestro, Masolino da Panicale, including the gruesome beheading of St John the Baptist, watched by an ice-cold Salome.
If this was in Florence or Rome, the place would be awash with tourists, but we had it entirely to ourselves. Indeed, the two elderly female guardians seemed so happy when we pitched up that I thought they were going to kiss me.
We arrived back at Maggiore just as the sun was sinking. As we poured evening drinks on the terrace, the bells start to ring again. But at this hour, with a glass in hand, they had a certain charm.
‘It’s pretty good here,’ said one of my daughters. The others agreed. At which point Mrs Milton announced that she’s booking a larger home next year, just in case.