Brissago islands - north lake maggiore, Canton Ticino Switzerland

Brissago islands , in navigation toward Ascona and Locarno

The Brissago Islands on the Most greater lake have been center of the botanical Park of the Canton Ticino since April 2 nd 1950 and they surely deserve a day of visit for a pleasant trip out of the noisy daily reality.

From 1885 to our days.

In the year 1885 Richards Fleming, Irish diplomatic baron and his wife Antoinette St. Leger they bought the Islands of Brissago with the rests of an ancient convent, islands that until then you/they were covered by wild and messy vegetation. After having restructured the convent they began to devote to the creation of the garden bringing on the island, thanks to special barges, good earth, fertilizers and endless varieties of subtropical plants. In 1897 the Baron left the islands to move himself to Naples and was so that he began the decline. His wife "abandoned" and flood of debts had to sell the ownership in 1927 to Max Emden to move first to Ascona and then to Intragna up to its death happened in 1948. His bare were subsequently you move on the great island to August 1972.

Max Emden was not a great impassioned of botany and horticulture but it was a lover of the beautiful life with the passion of the art and the luxury. To him the worth of the rich dominant building the great island built to the place of the convent with material appreciated, from the marble of Carrara to the Florentine floor of the red Room not to speak of the magnificence of the room of the Mirrors and the imposing staircases. For our void fortune he was touched in the vegetation and in the fittingses of the garden, rather the architects were particularly careful to harmonize the building to the spettacolarità of the magnificent garden been still intact. Max Emden remained on the islands of Brissago up to 1940 when it died in a hospital of Locarno.

The heirs of Emden in 1949 proposed the sale of the Islands of Brissago to the State Council of the Canton Ticino and it were so that the same State of the Canton Ticino, the three coastal cities of Ascona, Brissago and Ronco s / Ascona, the League for the defense of the national patrimony and that of the protection of the nature they purchased islands and Building with the promise to maintain, to preserve and to valorize the naturalistic park and the beautiful building that from the Great island it dominates the blue expanse of the Most greater lake.

As written in precedence in a Sunday of the Palms when it raced the day 2 April of 1950 they were open the gates to the public.

Boat service every day from march to november.