Thursday 7th Oct: Lake Maggiore

Lake Maggiore is the longest of the Italian lakes, the northern end of which is in Switzerland. We drove along a stretch of the shore closest to Lake Orta where we're staying. This is also one of the most glam bits. We stopped first at Stresa, holiday venue of Queen Victoria, and took a lakeside walk opposite the picturesque Borromean islands. The island featured in the photo hosted Mussolini and Napoleon (not at the same time!) and can be visited, but we’ll need to come back.

Along the front at Stresa were a number of memorials to Italians killed in both World Wars. There were also monuments and statues commemorating military actions and it is interesting to note that none related to the period of Mussolini’s dictatorship. The poignant statue shown is of a soldier of the Alpine Corps in the First World War and his mule, when Italy was one of the allies.

Now on to the Colosso di San Carlone that overlooks the lake. This is a gigantic bronze statue of St. Carlo Borromeo. He was made Archbishop of Milan at the age of 22 in 1550. Including the base, the statue is 115ft tall and was completed in 1697. It can be climbed from the inside and is the second largest statue in the world where this is possible: the largest is New York’s Statue of Liberty. In fact, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, Frederic Bartholdi, studied this effigy when planning the statue for which Eiffel, of Tower fame, supplied the structure.