Lake Maggiore, Italy’s second biggest lake, acts as a watery boundary between two regions – Lombardy and Piedmont, and can also claim to be in two countries at once, as its northern tip sits in Switzerland.
34 miles from Milan’s Malpensa airport, for Lake Maggiore as with all the Italian lakes, the micro-climate means endless sunshine and palm trees, but with the Alpine backdrop: from the eastern shore on a clear day one can see see Monte Rosa, a glacier-covered massif with ten summits, among the highest in the Alps. Some of the main cities that attract Milanese families for the weekend as well as international investors are Locarno, Verbania, Stresa and Luino, together with the beautiful and very theatrical Isole Borromeo (Borromeo Islands) and Isola dei Pescatori, a picturesque fisherman island.