Rocca Borromeo di Angera

The Rocca stands on a hilltop above Angera, in the Province of Varese at the southern end of Lago Maggiore, and looks across the water to Arona, where the remains of a castle with the same ownership history, the Rocca di Arona, still stand. Its oldest element is the square watchtower in the western part of the site, of a date no later than the Lombard period, around which the rest of the buildings accumulated between the eleventh and the seventeenth centuries. The tower belonged to the Milanese church, and the first enlargements were undertaken in the decades either side of 1300. In the thirteenth century it sheltered Archbishop Leone da Perego, forced to flee Milan by the city faction led by the Della Torre.

The Della Torre were defeated at the battle of Desio in 1277 by the Visconti, who led the party of the Milanese nobility. Ottone Visconti, archbishop and first lord of Milan, enlarged the fortress with the wing still called the Ottonian or Visconti wing, built in squared and smoothed local stone against the ancient keep and closing off the keep's original access. After Ottone's death the Visconti took possession of the Rocca and of other properties of the Milanese church; they paid Angera great attention, considering it their legendary place of origin.

The Ottonian wing holds the Hall of Justice, frescoed by an anonymous thirteenth-century painter known as the Maestro di Angera with episodes from Ottone's life, his victory over the Torriani at Desio and the pacification of Milan that followed. The cycle was probably commissioned by Ottone's nephew Matteo Visconti to celebrate his memory: the Christian cross is constantly present above Ottone's head, underlining his will to obtain the government of the city peacefully. One wall, whose frescoes partly survive, shows a Wheel of Fortune for the turn that took the Della Torre from mastery of Milan to defeat.

In 1350 Clement VI granted the rocca to the family of Bernabò Visconti, and between 1375 and 1385 Bernabò built a third wing for his wife Regina Della Scala, the Ala Scaligera. The political instability in Milan after the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1402 led to the loss of the dukes' direct influence over Angera, and Gaspare Visconti of Uberto, powerful count of nearby Arona and a distant cousin of the dukes, took advantage of it to obtain rights over the town and perhaps over its castle.

In 1439 Duke Filippo Maria, trying to cancel the hold of Gaspare's descendants on the southern portion of Lake Maggiore, ceded Arona to his treasurer Vitaliano Borromeo, of a wealthy family of Paduan and Tuscan merchants and bankers. Ten years later the new count of Arona acquired jurisdiction over Angera for 12,800 lire, the purchase of the town, the rocca and its pieve ratified by a deed of 18 January 1449 before the Council of Nine Hundred of the Ambrosian Republic. Angera became part of the small state the Borromeo were building around Lake Maggiore.

Apart from the brief period after 1497, when Angera returned to the direct control of the Sforza, the new dukes of Milan, the Rocca has belonged to the Borromeo ever since. The Borromean wing, which closes the Rocca to the south-east, was begun by the Visconti and transformed between 1564 and 1631.

In 1623 Philip IV of Spain conferred the title of marquis of Angera on Cardinal Federico Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, who then sent his own surveyor to advise on the works needed. The principal restorations were made under Giulio Cesare III (1593–1672) and Antonio Renato (1632–1686), when many of the interiors were redecorated by painters of standing: the Santagostino brothers, Antonio Busca and Filippo Abbiati.

The Borromeo still hold the Rocca, which is protected as Italian national heritage and open to visitors. Frescoes of the first half of the fifteenth century, attributed to Michelino da Besozzo, were lifted from the Palazzo Borromeo in Milan after the Second World War bombing that destroyed much of that town palace, and placed here in 1946. The former stables hold a winepress considered one of the largest in Europe.

In 1988 Princess Bona Borromeo Arese founded the Museo della Bambola e del Giocattolo in the castle, with over a thousand dolls made between the eighteenth century and the present day. Outside, towards the lake, the Borromeo gardeners have recreated medieval gardens from a meticulous study of period codices, planting medicinal and ornamental species, aromatic herbs and a vineyard.