The Digitization Project

The Borromeo family is undertaking a major digitization project in the cultural sites they own on Lake Maggiore. Since 2017, thousands of paintings, antique furniture, and sculptures from their extensive historical and artistic heritage have been catalogued, along with over 50,000 images from the Borromeo Archive and, more recently, the objects preserved in the Doll and Toy Museum housed in the Rocca di Angera.

This ambitious and innovative project is led by Princess Marina Borromeo Arese, aiming to create a “digital vault” for the protection and preservation of the family's complex historical, artistic, and documentary movable assets. The cataloguing focuses on two main areas, alongside other specific collections.

With reference to the Borromeo Archive, located in the palace on Isola Bella, the documentation preserved here is unique: 4,000 folders, approximately 1,700 registers, parchments, maps, and more. The materials, dating from the 12th to the 20th century, are available to scholars and researchers. The archive has been fully catalogued and is accessible up to the 1940s. Recognized as being of particularly significant historical interest, it is protected by the Archival and Bibliographical Superintendency of Piedmont and the Aosta Valley.

To date, over 50,000 images have been digitized, contained in more than 40 folders, related to the main properties (Cannero, Isola Bella, Isola Madre, Rocca di Angera, Rocca di Arona), the inventories of the residences, and some of the most requested specific collections by scholars (autographs, drawings, parchments). This documentation spans a vast chronological range, from the 16th to the 21st century, and includes projects, drawings, maps, sales, and correspondence. Additional cataloguing of the Autograph Collection and other properties is currently being completed.

The historical and artistic movable heritage, preserved in the residences of Isola Bella, Isola Madre, and Rocca di Angera, consists of approximately 2,000 paintings and around 1,000 antique pieces of furniture, along with numerous sculptures, tapestries, bronzes, and various types of artistic artifacts. Today, the entire valuable heritage displayed along the visitor route has been digitally catalogued into several thousand entries. To this main collection are added over 1,000 entries digitized in 2022, concerning artifacts—mostly dolls and toys—kept in the dedicated museum at the Rocca di Angera. Founded in 1988 by Princess Bona Borromeo Arese, it is one of the largest of its kind in Europe. A fascinating journey through the history of games and dolls from different eras to the present day, with a thematic section dedicated to 19th- and 20th-century automata.

The work of digitization and cataloguing was crucial for the realization of the most recent publications commissioned by the Borromeo family: the volume I castelli di Cannero (Scalpendi Editore, Milan 2019), linked to the large Vitaliana project and the plan to restore and transform the Castelli di Cannero into an innovative museum space, which will be completed within the next two years.
The latest publication was Vitaliano VI Borromeo. The Invention of Isola Bella (edited by A. Morandotti, M. Natale, Rizzoli, Milan 2020), released on the occasion of the exhibition held in 2019 at Palazzo Borromeo on Isola Bella, dedicated to Vitaliano VI, featuring documents and unpublished projects of the Palace.