Some land was purchased on Isola Bella (then called "lower island") by Giulio Cesare Borromeo, uncle of San Carlo, in the sixteenth century, who was already the owner of the nearby Isola Madre (bought in 1501 by his father). At the time the island was inhabited only by a few fishermen's houses with two small churches and some vegetable gardens.
It was Count Carlo III Borromeo who gave the island the name of his wife, Isabella d'Adda, from which Isola Isabella and later Isola Bella. He bought further land on the site until he became the owner of the entire island and then started construction of the building starting in 1632. At the same time, between 1631 and 1634, the general layout was created by the architect Giovanni Angelo Crivelli. gardens, with the idea of ??giving the island the scenic shape of a ship. To create the terraces of earth necessary for the growth of grass and plants for the park, a large amount of earth was transported by boats from the shore, in order to cover the rocky soil of which the island was made up. On the west side the "Torre della Noria" was erected, hidden seat of the hydraulic systems necessary for irrigation. The garden housed orange, lemon, box and cypress trees, mixed with crops of useful plants.
Towards the middle of the century, the works suffered a setback due to the plague epidemic that affected the entire duchy of Milan, but between 1652 and 1690 they resumed thanks to the initiative of the son of Charles III, Vitaliano VI , who with the support of his brother, Cardinal Giberto Borromeo, completed the structure, decorating it by his architect, Francesco Borromini, with stone decorations: balustrades, statues, obelisks, vases. The works in the building were also followed by other renowned architects of the time such as Francesco Maria Richini and Carlo Fontana. On the ground floor a series of rooms opening onto the garden were decorated in a cave.
In the garden, the construction of the central "Casino" which had been planned was given up and the oratory of San Rocco was demolished, building a system of underground chambers in its place. In 1675, in order to solve the lack of axial alignment between the palace and the garden, the "Diana atrium" was built, with two curved stairways just staggered.
Count Giberto hosted Napoleon on the palace on the island with his wife Josephine de Beauharnais as well as the Princess of Wales, Carolina Amalia of Brunswick.
With Vitaliano IX (1792-1874), expert in botany, species of exotic plants, greenhouses and a new water pumping system were introduced into the gardens.
The palace was completed by Prince Vitaliano X (1892-1982) who finished the north facade and the connected pier and built the large hall based on the original project.
The palace, characterized by a T-shaped plan, stands at the north end of the island, dominated by the 80 linear m long facade, with the curvilinear projection of the hall of honor in the center, developed on two floors and covered by a domed roof .
The palace chapel, also on the ground floor, houses objects that belonged to San Carlo Borromeo and Cardinal Federico, as well as three sepulchral monuments of characters of the family.
On the first floor, around the central hall, there are decorated and furnished rooms, including the Napoleon room, where he stayed in 1797, the Throne room and the Music room, where the Stresa conference was held in 1935, between Benito Mussolini, Pierre Laval and Ramsay MacDonald.
The interiors of the building host paintings by well-known painters, including Luca Giordano, Francesco Zuccarelli and Pieter Mulier, known as the Tempest. In the gallery of the Tapestries there are sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries with scenes of animals symbolizing the struggle between Good and Evil.
In 2008 the gallery of Paintings (or of General Berhier) was also reopened to the public, where the collection of paintings of the family is kept, with works by Raphael, Correggio, Tiziano and Guido Reni, together with the Queen's room and the room of the Throne.
On the ground floor a series of rooms with cave decoration open towards the garden, with decorative motifs formed by pebbles and small stones.
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