Historical Lake Disappearances Highlight Garda Island and Portofino Cases
The yellowing of the news about the disappearance of Countess Francesca Vacca Agusta from her villa in Portofino has brought to mind a similar incident that happened on the lake in the 1920s. The scene of the drama was Garda Island, located between the Grosti di Portese Point and the Gulf of Salò: the victim was a princess about whom nothing more was known.
Only her slippers were found, floating on the water. A detail reminiscent of what happened in Portofino in recent days: it is indeed from yesterday the discovery of the countess Vacca Agusta’s slippers and bathrobe. A suspected extreme act.
The case of the missing princess on Garda in 1924
But let’s return to the Garda mystery. It happened back in 1924. On November 25th, while planting oak seeds, Anna Maria De Ferrari Borghese disappeared into the lake waters. No one saw her fall. Divers conducted searches for about ten days, but found no trace.
The depth of the lakebed reaches 300 meters. The illustrator of «Domenica del Corriere», Achille Beltrame, dedicated a full page to her: the flight and the mystery. The Genoese duke Gaetano De Ferrari, remembered in Risorgimento history for partially funding Garibaldi’s Mille expedition, had purchased the island in 1869 from the Bergamasque baron Raffaele Scotti.
Together with his wife, Anna Maria Annenkoff, daughter of the former Russian Emperor, the duke decided to build the current large palace, in Gothic-Venetian style, designed by architect Luigi Rovelli and built between 1900 and 1902. “With its ogival trifore windows, columns, tower, loggia, and white pinnacles, it looks like a gigantic embroidery, playing with the sunlight,” states researcher Pierluigi Mazzoldi in his book dedicated to San Felice del Benaco.
The island was left to their only daughter, born in 1874, who bore the same name as her mother, and in 1895 she married Scipione Borghese, Prince of Sulmona. He entered history for a series of legendary exploits: expeditions, climbs, and notably, the Beijing-Paris raid of 1907: 16,000 kilometers onboard an Itala car, with journalist Luigi Barzini and mechanic Ettore Guizzardi, crossing torrents, swamps, and sandy routes.
In October 1917, during the revolution, Princess Anna Maria hosted eighteen young Russians, both men and women. And she also made them study. During the World War I period, as a nurse, she helped wounded soldiers hospitalized at Salò hospital. She did not fear even the Spanish flu, so much so that she was awarded a silver medal for civil valor for her charitable acts.
She financially assisted fighters and veterans, leaving the building of the Portese nursery school as her inheritance to the municipality. In November 1924, at the age of fifty, she disappeared into the lake’s waters while planting trees. Annenkoff, her mother, had died just a few months earlier. One of the Borghese daughters, Lady Livia, married the Bolognese count Alessandro Cavazza.
They had children: Paolo Emilio, Novello, and Camillo. Camillo’s wife, the Englishwoman Charlotte Talbot Chetwynd, is the current owner of the island, along with their children. Another tragedy struck in 1921, when gusts of wind capsized a sail cutter carrying Marquis Nicola Degli Albizzi of Modena (who, during WWI and the Battle of Cavanetto Horn on the Adamello, commanded the platoon that blew up the Austrian position with hand grenades and was decorated with a silver medal for military valor) and his American wife Maris Bona Kifer.
Despite the intervention of Prince Scipione’s men, the woman sank to the bottom and was never recovered. A famous island, Garda Island. It hosted St. Francis of Assisi (who built one of his earliest hermitages there), St. Anthony of Padua, San Bernardino of Siena, Dante Alighieri, Cosimo de’ Medici, and many other famous figures. Among them, General Dwight Eisenhower, who later became President of the United States.