Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore
Recently, I’ve been challenged to go through years of photos on my iPad, iPhone, computer, and elsewhere, prompted by a reminder that as a family we are paying for Dropbox, iCloud and other storage fees that we could probably avoid if we just reduced some of the volume. I’m particularly bad about regularly culling my photos, or deleting the ones that are out of focus, feature an errant thumb, or just aren’t the most flattering of anyone.
That said, I love being reminded of all the places I’ve traveled to – some of the photos are over a decade old, so it isn’t bad to also get a chance to see your younger self on vacation either. On occasion, I’ve also come across photos from multiple trips to the same destination. What strikes me with those, however, is not the variance but rather the similarities in what the camera captured.
Isola Bella, on Lake Maggiore in Italy, has been dominated since the 17th century by the palazzo of the Borromeo family, in all its eccentricities. What Ernest Hemingway would have seen there if he visited by boat, traveling a few hundred meters from the seaside town of Stresa in the 1940s, is very much what you would see today. Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms, features scenes in Stresa, and he did spend time there, where he surely could not have helped but to see the “beautiful island” only a short distance away in the lake. Today, visitors and tourists see the same sights, with the unconventional palace and its lavish gardens, resting on the tiny island otherwise marked by fishing boats and the winding steps through the craggy hillside.
I first visited Isola Bella in 2014, with a friend who had heard about it; together we drove to Stresa from Milan, through the corkscrew-like roads that dominate the northern Italian landscape. We persuaded a boat captain to take us to the island, having missed the scheduled ferry departure. Once on the island we lazily spent the afternoon eating lunch in a restaurant overlooking the water, being simultaneously awed and exhausted by the somewhat endless Baroque spectacle that was the palace, and wandering the gardens amidst white peacocks both elegant and fierce. My photos from that trip show that I couldn’t resist multiple shots of the palace and grounds, attempts to artfully frame the fishing boats along the shore and, of course, to try to capture a gorgeous shot of those temperamental peacocks.
In 2019, on a trip again to the Italian lakes, this time with my husband, I persuaded him to also visit Isola Bella. On this occasion we traveled the entire way by boat, from Locarno, and so approached the island by sea. My husband, whose knowledge of 17th century European history far outstrips mine, was a different kind of companion, and cheerfully agreed to a day trip to this rather off-the-beaten path destination. The island had not changed- not in five years, not since Hemingway, not since long before that – but when I sort through our photos now, I see the same experiences, just in different perspectives. We had Negronis at a café in the palace garden, we walked the palace (first marveling at it and then being overwhelmed by it), and the flowers and landscaping sparkled against a consistent blue sky.
The photos here are a mix from both trips – I rather like that you see the same sights, picture postcards unchanged by a little time. And at least one reflects that we managed to cajole the peacocks into the vacation memories with not a complete disdain for the camera.
