By car: from the A26 motorway, exit at Brovello Carpugnino towards Gignese, and follow the signs for Alpino-Mottarone.

Alpino is a pretty hamlet on the hillside between Stresa and Gignese, best known for the beautiful Alpinia Botanic Garden.

As well as being home to plant species from the Alps and the subalpine area, this celebrated garden, in a spectacular setting at an altitude of 800 metres, contains species from the Caucasus, China and Japan. Its most valuable plants are specimens of trees and shrubs, some of them rare.

Its marvellous view, sweeping over the Borromean Gulf to the Swiss Alps, made Alpino a tourist magnet for many of the European nobility from the mid-19th century. Many artists also chose the village as a holiday destination, and stayed on to find inspiration for their creativity. Painters from the Lombard school and well-known musicians fell in love with the area and built handsome villas: Villa Pica-Alfieri, Villa Rebora Pimpinelli, Villa dell'Orto and Villa Anfossi.

The last of these conserves a Latin epigraph that Achille Ratti dedicated to Alpino: “Here all is music, and the task of the maestro is to translate into notes the noble voice of nature”.

Giardino Botanico Alpinia
giardinoalpiniastresa@gmail.com
www.giardinobotanicoalpinia.org