Rocca Borromeo di Angera

The Rocca Borromeo is a modest but picture-perfect Borromeo castle in a spectacular setting on Italy's Lago Maggiore (Lake Maggiore)

The Rocca Borromeo above Angera. (Photo by Alessandro Vecchi)

South of Santa Caterina del Sasso, and directly across Lake Maggiore from Arona, rises the mighty Rocca di Angera, an 8th-century Lombard fortress dominating Angera's headland near the lake's southeast corner.

Long before the Borromeo came along, the Torriani family controlled the southern end of the lake, and built the original castles here and at Arona (the latter later leveled by Napoleon, about whom more in a just a minute).

The gardens inside the walls of the Rocca Borromeo. (Photo courtesy of Borromeo Tourism) The castle was wrested from Torriani control in the the 13th century by the Visconti of Milan, who expanded it. It soon became the seat of its own county, and in 1449 passed to the Borromeo clan, who continued modifying the castle until the 18th century.

Today the swallow-tailed crenellations of its outer ramparts protect little more than a small grape plantation along with some olive trees and flower beds.

The rare frescoes

The Hall of Justice. In the Sala di Giustizia ("Hall of Justice") are preserved some lovely marvelously crude medieval frescoes from 1342-54, making them among the oldest surviving Lombard-Gothic works on a non-religious subject.

A detail of the frescoes in the Sala di Giustizia. (Photo by Wolfgang Sauber) The frescoes celebrate the battles Archbishop Ottone Visconti waged in the 1270s against the castle's former owners, the Torriani, for control of Milan's bishopric and city council. The Visconti, of course, won and went on to become lords of Milan (and patrons of the Borromeo).

The Torriani family moved on and five centuries later produced a descendent named (drum-roll please) Napoléon Bonaparte.

The doll museum

The Museo della Bambola in the Rocca Angera. (Photo by Wolfgang Sauber)Most of the fortress's rooms now house the Museo della Bambola e del Giocattolo—a Doll Museum, which is actually far more interesting than it sounds.

The dolls are mostly 18th- and 19th-century European, but there are examples from around the world and dating back to the 1200s, including a splendid collection of Japanese figures.

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