Isola del Garda by Private Boat

Isola del Garda is the largest island on Lake Garda, part of the comune of San Felice del Benaco in the Province of Brescia. It sits off the western shore, separated from the promontory of Capo San Fermo by around 220 meters of open water, and is approximately 1.1 kilometers long and 70 meters wide at its widest point.

The Borghese Cavazza family lives on the island year-round and opens it for guided tours from April to October. The approach by private boat from the western shore gives the island a different arrival from the organized ferry departures that serve the public tours, and the view of the villa and gardens from the water before landing is one that the standard tour groups on the ferry also receive but rarely have time to absorb at the pace a private tour rewards.

The villa operates as a private residence rather than a public museum. The Borghese Cavazza family has lived on the island continuously since the 19th century, and the guided tours are conducted by family members. The guides speak from personal knowledge, and the revenue from tours covers the cost of maintaining a historic villa on a private island. That combination of personal access and ongoing family occupation is what distinguishes Isola del Garda from any public villa on the lake.

The island has a history stretching back to the Roman period, confirmed by 130 Gallo-Roman tombstones found on site. It was granted to the monks of San Zeno of Verona in 879 and became a Franciscan monastery in the 13th century, with Francis of Assisi, Anthony of Padua, and Dante Alighieri all reported to have visited during the medieval period. Napoleon suppressed the monastery in 1797 and the island changed hands several times before Duke Gaetano de Ferrari of Genoa acquired it around 1860.

De Ferrari and his wife Maria Sergeyevna Annenkova, a Russian aristocrat adopted as a teenager by Tsar Nicholas I, transformed the island between 1880 and 1903, importing fertile soil from the mainland and commissioning Luigi Rovelli to build the Venetian neo-Gothic villa. The Duke died in 1893 before seeing it completed. His daughter Anna Maria married Scipione Borghese, Prince of Sulmona, in 1895, connecting the island to one of Rome’s most significant noble families. Prince Scipione won the Peking to Paris automobile race in 1907, covering 16,000 kilometers in 60 days.

The island passed through the Borghese line to Livia Borghese, who married Count Alessandro Cavazza of Bologna, a family known for founding institutions for the blind and orphaned in that city. Livia’s son Camillo moved permanently to the island in 1965 with his wife Lady Charlotte Chetwynd-Talbot, eldest daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who planted an English garden around the pre-existing formal gardens over the following two decades. The current members of the Cavazza family maintain the island and conduct the tours today.

The island is a private island and access is by guided tour only, with tours selling out months in advance during summer. The difference between arriving by private boat and joining the organized ferry departure from one of the lake’s ports is the difference between approaching the island at the pace you choose and arriving with a group at the pace the schedule demands.

The quality of the visit itself is shaped by who leads it. A family member who has grown up on the island, who knows the specific history of each room, each section of the garden, and each object in the villa from personal rather than professional knowledge, provides a commentary that the standard guided tour cannot replicate.

The personal narrative of a family that has maintained continuous occupation of a private island estate across five generations, through two world wars and the full range of 20th-century Italian history, is a different kind of access from the ticket-and-commentary experience that the grander public villas on the lake provide.

The island is approached by boat, and the first view from the water gives the full context of what the de Ferrari family built. The Venetian neo-Gothic villa rises above terraced gardens descending to the waterfront, its crenelated tower and arched windows designed to evoke the architecture of Venice, on an island 70 meters wide whose soil was entirely imported from the mainland.

The visit covers the park, the Italian garden, the English garden, and the olive grove, alongside the Franciscan cemetery, a colony of gray herons, the greenhouse at the center of the rose garden, the Casa delle Fate, and selected villa interiors from the early 1900s. The neo-Gothic terrace, with a view over the Italian garden and the lake, is one of the most complete perspectives of the western shore available from any point on Lake Garda.

The villa’s 63 rooms hold canvases, portraits, and photographs of the current owners, and the family’s history is present throughout in a way that a professional museum does not produce. The Peking to Paris race car of Prince Scipione Borghese, photographs of Lady Charlotte’s English childhood, and documents of the Cavazza family’s philanthropic work in Bologna are all part of a narrative that the family guides provide from personal knowledge.

Do Not Disturb arranges the private boat crossing from the guest’s accommodation on the western shore, timed to reach the island at the start of the first available guided tour of the day. Tickets must be purchased well in advance through the official booking platform, particularly for summer visits, as tours sell out months ahead. Do Not Disturb handles the advance booking and coordinates the private boat departure and return with the tour schedule.

Ready to plan your private boat crossing to Isola del Garda and experience Lake Garda’s most significant private island estate with the family who maintains it? Speak with Do Not Disturb to begin your journey.