Brissago Islands

The Brissago Islands amount to three hectares — 0.03 square kilometres — set on Lake Maggiore near its northern shore, close to the Italian border. The larger one, San Pancrazio, is reached by scheduled boats: it carries the botanical garden and the villa. The smaller, Sant'Apollinare, also called the Island of Rabbits, is protected and cannot be visited. The water around them marks, at 193.5 metres, the lowest altitude in Switzerland.

The garden on the larger island gathers subtropical plants from the Mediterranean, China, Korea, Japan, Africa, the three Americas, Australia and islands of Oceania. What makes the assembly possible is not a glasshouse but the Insubric climate of the lower Ticino, mild enough for these species to winter outdoors, within sight of snow-covered summits. The garden opened to the public on 2 April 1950, a Palm Sunday; the villa above it now serves as a hotel and restaurant.

The garden was born of a whim and a fortune. In 1885 Baroness Antoinette Tzikos de Saint-Léger and her husband, the Irish banker Richard Fleming, bought two rocks bearing thin native vegetation and the ruins of a convent. They rebuilt the convent, planted, brought in species from every continent, and the islands became a meeting place for painters, sculptors, musicians and writers. The baron abandoned island and wife in 1897 for Naples; the baroness, cornered, sold in 1927 and ended up on public assistance at Intragna, where she died on 24 January 1948. Her remains were brought back to the larger island on 12 August 1972.

The buyer in 1927 was Max Emden (1874-1940), a Hamburg merchant. He had the Berlin architect Alfred Breslauer build the neoclassical villa seen today, on a 17th-century house, dug a boat dock and a Roman bath, and pushed the exotic plantings further. His heirs sold in 1949, and a coalition bought: the canton of Ticino, the communes of Ascona, Brissago and Ronco sopra Ascona, the Swiss League for National Heritage and the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature. The contract signed on 2 September 1949 reserved the islands and their buildings for the conservation and popularisation of natural beauty, for science, culture and tourism — which is what they have done since.

Why this place is remarkable

Three hectares hold together two things that do not go together elsewhere: plants from Africa, China and Oceania wintering in open ground, and the lowest altitude in the country, 193.5 metres, beneath summits still white in spring. The garden is not a collection under glass but a piece of Insubric climate, tended since 1885 by successive owners and made public property in 1949.

History and origin

The islands were settled long ago: the larger one has yielded Roman remains, and both rocks served as refuge for early Christians during the persecutions. In the 13th century the monks of the Umiliati order settled here; when Pius V suppressed the order in 1571, the islands emptied and stayed uninhabited. On Sant'Apollinare stand the ruins of a small Romanesque church dedicated to that saint, built in the 12th century on Roman remains — today the part of the archipelago that nobody visits.