Castelli di Cannero

The Castelli di Cannero are two ruined fortresses on rocky islets in the northern section of Lake Maggiore, approximately 300 metres from the western shore near the village of Cannero Riviera. The islets are small — rocky outcrops of the Alpine granite that forms the lake's western shoreline — and the ruined towers and walls that rise from them have the silhouette that makes them one of the most frequently photographed sites on the Italian lake district. The image is familiar from calendar photographs of Lake Maggiore: the two jagged ruins rising from still water at dusk, backed by the mountains of the Swiss border visible immediately to the north. What the photograph doesn't tell you is who built these towers and why.

In 1403, the five Mazzarditi brothers began construction on the two islets that would become known as the Castle of Malpaga — a name whose literal translation, 'bad payment,' gives an adequate indication of the enterprise it housed. The Mazzarditi were pirates. Not metaphorical pirates or commercial raiders operating in some grey zone of medieval commerce, but straightforward lake-based brigands who used the island position to intercept, board, and rob the cargo vessels moving between the northern Alpine valleys and the Po plain via Lake Maggiore's waters. The enclosed moorings they built on the islets housed their armed boats; the towers gave them the visibility to spot approaching targets; the island position made them difficult to dislodge by land-based military force.

For eleven years, the Mazzarditi operated their lake-toll system with the confidence of operators who understood that water is a natural moat. Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, who controlled Milan and the surrounding territory, finally dispatched a military expedition in 1414 — presumably by boat — that captured the islets, destroyed the fortress, and removed the Mazzarditi from the historical record. The violence of this suppression can be inferred from the completeness with which the original structure was destroyed; the Visconti expedition was not interested in taking a usable fortress but in eliminating a base of operations.

A century later, the islets were rebuilt. Ludovico Borromeo, a member of the family that would accumulate a substantial Lake Maggiore property portfolio including the Borromean Islands (Isola Bella, Isola Pescatori, Isola Madre), commissioned a new fortified complex on the Mazzarditi ruins between 1519 and 1521. His motivation was different from his predecessors' — the Rocca Vitaliana (named for his son Vitaliano) was not a pirate base but a military watchtower complex designed to control the northern approaches to Lake Maggiore against Swiss incursions. The early 16th century was a period of Swiss military expansion southward across the Alpine passes, and the Borromeo family, with their lakeside estates in the northern section of the lake, had a direct interest in defending the upper lake corridor.

The Borromeo fortification was abandoned as its military purpose became obsolete and its structural condition deteriorated. By the late 18th century, the complex was a picturesque ruin — the classic fate of Italian lakeside fortifications that survived military destruction but not the passage of time and the indifference of successive owners. For two centuries the ruins were visible from the shore and from passing lake steamers, appearing in countless landscape paintings and early photographs, without anyone admitting visitors to the islands themselves.

The restoration that changed this took several years and cost approximately €15 million, partly funded by public heritage grants. The physical work stabilised the surviving masonry, made the island terrain accessible within the ruins' footprint, and prepared the site for the first-ever public admission — which happened on 28 June 2025. This is worth emphasising because it is unusual: the June 2025 opening was not a reopening after a period of closure. It was the first time, in more than six centuries of the site's documented existence, that visitors have been able to land on the islands and walk among the ruins.

Access is by boat only — there is no land connection to the islets, and the 300-metre crossing from Cannero Riviera is a practical necessity of every visit. The GYG product (t1282258, from $30) provides the boat transfer and an audio guide: the boat crossing is part of the experience rather than a logistical inconvenience, since approaching the islands from the water replicates the only way the Mazzarditi, the Visconti soldiers, and the Borromeo builders could have approached them.

The northern section of Lake Maggiore — the stretch between Cannero Riviera, Cannobio, and the Swiss border at Locarno — is less intensively visited than the more famous southern section around Stresa and the Borromean Islands. This relative quiet means the Castelli di Cannero are currently visited by a smaller crowd than their historical interest and the quality of the restored ruins would merit. The mountain backdrop at the northern end of the lake — the Swiss Alps visible directly north, the Italian Alps on the eastern and western shores — is more dramatically alpine than the landscapes around Stresa, and the overall quality of the light on the northern lake in the early morning and at dusk gives the pirate castles a visual atmosphere that the calendar photographers have not exaggerated.

[Rocca di Angera](/castles/italy/rocca-di-angera), on the southeastern shore of Lake Maggiore near Sesto Calende, is the principal historical counterpart — the Visconti-era fortress that controlled the southern end of the lake in the same period that the Mazzarditi were terrorising the north.