Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées & SPA
Stresa, Italy · 5-star Hotel
Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées & SPA in photographs
When to go
The cheapest month we have found is November, at around USD 270 a night - -16% against what this hotel usually asks.
Where to book
- Book on Booking.com - Free cancellation options, guest reviews and a familiar checkout.
- Hotel website - Photos, facilities and location.
Our notes
Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées & SPA
The Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées is one of the historic grand hotels of Lake Maggiore, on the lakefront at Corso Umberto I in Stresa, facing the Borromean Islands. According to the hotel it was inaugurated on 21 March 1863, commissioned by the Omarini brothers and designed by the architect Antonio Polli, and it has had its present appearance since the early twentieth century. The park was laid out at the same time as the hotel, as Italian-style flowerbeds in front of the view of the islands. Hemingway used the hotel's bar as the setting for a scene in A Farewell to Arms, and the Hemingway Bar still carries his name.
The public rooms are furnished in blue, purple and gold, and the suites combine period décor with modern comfort. The lake-front restaurant Il Borromeo is led by Executive Chef Paolo Platini, and there is also a poolside bistro in summer and the Cantina Paradise wine bar. In the park, "Le Piscine nel Parco" has a large naturalistic pool, a diving pool, hydromassage beds and waterfalls, and the Des Iles SPA offers treatments and programmes.
Milan's Malpensa and Linate airports are the nearest major airports. Our review record: Google 4.7 from 2,673 reviews, TripAdvisor 4.4 from 2,328 (number 5 of 37 hotels in Stresa) and Booking.com 9.1 from 2,033, all read on 13 September 2026. Photographs: the hotel's own website, borromees.com.
The area
Stresa is Lake Maggiore's grand old resort town, the kind of place that filled up with European nobility in the nineteenth century and has kept the architecture to prove it - Ernest Hemingway stayed at the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées and later put the town into "A Farewell to Arms." The real draw, though, is just offshore: the three Borromean Islands, developed since the early sixteenth century by the Borromeo family, who still own them. Isola Bella carries a Baroque palace and ten terraced gardens (peacocks included), with a grotto inside encrusted floor to ceiling in shells and pebbles. Isola Madre is the largest and the quietest, given over almost entirely to an English-style botanical garden that one particular Borromeo, Vitaliano IX, spent fifty years expanding with plants gathered from around the world. Isola dei Pescatori is the only island anyone still actually lives on - a genuine fishing village of about fifty residents, narrow lanes, and lakeside restaurants that serve whatever was caught that morning. All three are a short boat ride from Stresa's own lakefront promenade, and seeing all three in a day is the standard, and thoroughly worthwhile, way to spend one in Stresa.
What it costs through the year
| Cheapest we have seen | USD 267 ≈ €239 |
|---|---|
| What it usually costs | USD 322 ≈ €288 |
| Dearest we have seen | USD 389 ≈ €348 |
| Times we looked | 7 |
| Gap between the two | 38% |
| Last checked | 2026-10-31 |