Villa Taranto, Lake Maggiore

Villa Taranto was built in the 1830s by a Scot, Captain Neil McEacharn, and it has one of the richest botanical gardens in the world. The grandiose park of Villa Taranto connects the two sections of the town, Pallanza and Intra. The gardens have been laid out in English style, although Italian elements are not missing: statues, fountains, ponds, terraces, waterfalls.

Villa Taranto was created in the late 1940s by a botanist who was a former Scottish army officer who discovered this microclimate on the western coast of Lake Maggiore to be ideal for cultivating plants from all over the world. There are plants native to northern Italy as well as species from the Amazon rainforest and other far-off places. There are more than 20,000 different kinds of flowers, trees, shrubs, and water plants in the landscape-style gardens and park. There are more than 300 different varieties of dahlias.