An accursed Island Stronghold
Crumbling relics of a reign of terror

From:
The Graphic, May 23, 1925, p. 857
by Luigi Rossari,

«The Borromeans are not for sale!», declared count Borromeo with disdain, when, a short time ago, the French newspapers wrote about the possible sale of the historic islands. The glory of this patrician Italian family is too closely bound to these islands to permit their descendants to haul down the flag with its motto, ”Humility”, which waves in the shimmering air of the lake over the elevated terraces of Isola Bella. And it is right that the foreigner who has made his way down into Italy through the rugged valley of the Ossola on to the wonderful, blue smiling lake, should receive his first greeting from these luxuriant islands, the realm of dreams and poetry, adorned by the name of an Italian house famous in history and art.
But when one talks of the Borromeans, one thinks only of the famous Isola Bella, which Vitaliano in 1640 adorned with a magnificent garden and a Royal palace, with its treasures of salons, furniture, arms, tapestries and pictures. and of Isola Madre, which Renato in 1596 transformed into an Armidian garden. But there is another Borromean island, far from this smiling bay, there where the lake bends towards Locarno, with a different aspect, without the overgrown hotels, without noise, but with the poetry of its verdant, tranquil shores. Round the traveller who, leaving the bustle of Laveno, steers his way towards Switzerland over the waves, whose tender blue surpasses in sweetness that of the sky, smile the curving shores, the tiny bays, decked only with villas and gardens. From afar the mountains smile on him, with the soft gentle play of light and shade on their slopes, with light veils of clouds on their summits. But suddenly, Cannero barely left behind, there rises out of the glistening water a dark, tragic group of islands, on which stand the sombre, massive ruins of crumbling walls and towers, on which, amid the surrounding radiance, the sun`s rays die: the Castle of Malpaga!
Before 1400 it was a bare rock, the lonely landing-place of fishermen during storms. Nature`s tempests are short; longer and more ferocious are those of men; on the shore, in the town of Cannobío, for a century the implacable and bloody struggle between Ghibellins and Guelfs had raged. The chiefs of the Ghibellins were the brothers Mazzardi — Giovanolo, Beltramino, Simonetto, Petrolo — strong, violent and sanguinary. In 1403 they possessed themselves of Cannobio, fortifying themselves in Parrasio and in the tower of the Commune, and promptly abandoned themselves to ruthless vendettas: houses sacked, women raped and killed, men thrown by tens into the lake, down from the Carmine rock, quartered, beaten to death with mallets, hung up for derision for days on the trees in the streets.
They harassed even their friends; they made them sell their goods and paid the price, but their bravoes robbed the vendors at the gate. The Guelfs proclaimed a crusade against them, but they knew how to defend themselves; nevertheless, warned of the danger, they decided to fortify themselves on the deserted island, and built on it a formidable castle, ”The Malpaga”, a safe refuge after their bloody raids, the scene of debaucheries and of new and more atrocious crimes. Legend relates the most awful details of innumerable maidens ravished, imprisoned in the castle, insulted and thrown nude from the bastions into the lake ; of the unhappy wife of the Mayor of Cannobio himself, Giacomo Pozzi, torn from her husband, insulted and killed. And the inhabitants point out, with a shudder of horror, the sombre ruined halls where these unhappy creatures lived their last terrible hours.
Their nefarious audacity now knew no bounds, and they dared to offend the too powerful Filippo Maria Visconti. The new Duke of Milan, after a raid into his fief of Angera, sent a strong contingent of soldiers against them, under the command of Captain Giacomo Lonati. The brigands, penned in the island under a close siege, were only constrained to surrender by hunger, being granted their lives. (Human justice sometimes shows such indulgences.) But, if the marauders were thus spared the late which was so clearly their due, care was taken to demolish the infamous castle, the scene of so many of their villainies. It was partly rebuilt by Lodovico Borromeo, when he became its owner, and he was beseiged in it by Ascanio Visconti, one of Francesco Sforza`s commanders. After that the accursed castle was abandoned to gradual decay. Every day its ruins become more sombre and decrepit, and its dark story of crime always enfolds it. Forbidding` in the daytime, it rises at night-time out of the water, grim and funereal, like a spectre of the past ; and in the ruins, in the dead water at their feet. In the shadows of the demolished walls, there seems to linger the echo of far-off, despairing sighs. And it seems as if the smile of Nature has remained to remind us of the eternal ferocity of man.