Isolino di San Giovanni

The Isolino di San Giovanni is the smallest of the islands of the Golfo Borromeo, located on Lago Maggiore directly opposite Pallanza. Until now its history had never been written, also because its use had been mostly for purely family reasons. Nevertheless, considerable information has emerged about it through research into the papers of the Borromeo Archive on Isola Bella. Author Adele Buratti Mazzotta has created the work “L'Isolino di San Giovanni. Già di Sant'Angelo”, published by Cattaneo Editore, exploring its five hundred years of history. We see how over the centuries the island, known in the Middle Ages and until the 16th century as the island of Sant'Angelo, was subsequently increasingly identified with the current name due to the reference to an oratory that stood there almost until the present day. In 1631 the canons of the church of San Leonardo in Pallanza, the owners at the time, assigned it on the basis of perpetual emphyteusis to Giulio Cesare Borromeo. Since then for more than two hundred years the count and his successors let out the island to people from the area who cultivated fruit and vegetables there, taking care of its maintenance. Until in 1866 the house was let out for the first time as a "holiday home”. Since then the island has been rented out for this purpose to Italian and foreign personalities wishing to enjoy its natural beauty and pleasant climate. Among these was maestro Arturo Toscanini. The volume is a story that has been complied thanks to the abundant documentation present, with letters, inventories and expense accounts in the papers of the archive, and to the scrupulous work of the author, formerly Full Professor of Design and Relief in Architecture in the degree course in Construction Engineering at the Faculty of Architecture of the Milan Politecnico.

The proceeds from the sale of the volume will be donated in their entirety to the AIRC, the Italian Association for Cancer Research.