Lake Maggiore: infinite beauty
A treasure of elegance enriched by the variety of cultures that have been intersecting since centuries, overcoming every regional boundary
Lake Maggiore is a place of rare elegance, where the natural beauty of its banks is added to the richness of a cultural heritage produced by a centuries-old intertwining of people and boundaries. The shores of Lake Maggiore extend between the province of Novara, that of Varese and that of Verbania, between Piedmont and Lombardy and between Italy and Switzerland: Lake Maggiore has always been a crossroads of contact and reciprocal contamination, always open to different identities and to cosmopolitanism. In all the villages lying on the shores of the lake, you can breathe an atmosphere of relaxed beauty and dynamism, which is particularly perceived in some symbolic places such as Stresa, the Borromeo Islands and Cannobio.
Between the last decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the name of Lake Maggiore had an international resonance; thanks to the opening of the railway tunnel of Simplon (1906), the European aristocracy and the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of Belle Epoque began to consider this wonderful Lake as a privileged destination for their Grand Tours and their holiday destinations. It was the golden age of Lake Maggiore and in particular of Stresa, that saw even the legendary Orient Express passing through its train station. An era that can still be felt among the façades of the liberty and déco hotels overlooking the shores of the lake, but also in lush gardens and in the colors looking like art nouveau stained glass windows.