Overview
Villa Taranto, with its beautiful gardens, was built in 1875 and donated to the Italian State in 1939 by the Scotsman Neil McEacharn, who designed the gardens but left no heirs. Today, the villa is the seat of the Prefecture of Verbano Cusio Ossola. The gardens are located on the tip of the Castagnola headland, about 100 m above the level of the lake, and were built in about five years under the guidance of head gardener Henry Cocker. The colourful beds and aromatic plants offer a rich visual diversity, covering an area of about 20 hectares planted with 20,000 varieties of plants from all over the world.
