Stresa

The tourist reputation of Stresa is due to the tales of excellent travellers who, since the 1800's, chose Stresa as one of the places to visit during their Grand Tour in Italy: Stendhal, Charles Dickens and Lord Byron have been here and they wrote about this magnificent territory.

In the historical center there are the church of S.Ambrogio (with paintings of the 17th century) and Villa Ducale (1770) that since 1966 is seat of a museum and a rich library. The villa is surrounded by a garden with a monumental cedar of Lebanon dated back to 1860.

Stresa is also the point of departure for splendid excursions towards the mountains: on the road that leads to Mount Mottarone there is the Giardino Alpinia, a garden created in order to safeguard a charming panoramic zone and to form a collection of typical mountain trees and flowers. In the park there are today approximately 700 species of alpine and officinal herbs. The road leads to the top of the mountain (1491 m), where there is a ski station and from where you can enjoy, when the sky is clear, the evocative sight on the lakes of the zone.