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Angelo Crivelli began to lay out the island as a garden for Count Carlo Borromeo (of the same family as the saint) in about 1630.
It was called after the Countess and was conceived as a floating galleon with a garden shaped like the prow of a ship.
After the Count's death his son Vitalino employed Francesco Castelli and Carlo Fontana to work on the garden.
The enitre island was eventually converted into an immense pleasure garden with ten terraces.
The most fantastic feature of the whole scheme was the theatre.
Bursting with gods and goddesses and surmounted by a rampant unicorn, it is the culmination of a design at once romantic and dramatic where white peacocks take their place as inevitably as sculptured deities.
The teatro stands on the penultimate terrace of the island.
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