Roman remains have been found on San Pancrazio. The islands were used as a refuge by early Christians. In the thirteenth century nuns of the
Humiliati order built a monastery on San Pancrazio, while the local parish also built around this time the Church of S. Pancrazio. After the suppression of the Humiliati in 1571 by
Pope Pius V, the order's property was given to the hospital in Locarno and the islands became uninhabited.
St. Leger , 1886 In 1885 an Anglo-Irishman of the aristocratic Saint Leger family, Richard Fleming, and his
Saint Petersburg-born wife Antoinette (née Bayer, 1856 to 1948) purchased the Brissago Islands with a family legacy inherited by Fleming. The Brissago Islands at the time were deserted, covered with vegetation and the remains of an old
convent once used by sectarian nuns. and her island residence became a centre of intense cultural and business activities. Between 1886 and 1914, Baroness Antoinette de Saint Léger (as she called herself after her husband inherited the title from one of his uncles) hosted on the island the painters
Daniele Ranzoni, and
Giovanni Segantini and the composer
Ruggero Leoncavallo. After World War I, she also hosted
Rainer Maria Rilke and
Harry Graf Kessler. In 1919, the Irish writer
James Joyce, who at the time was working on his novel
Ulysses, visited the island and stayed at the baroness' residence; Joyce who was staying in nearby Locarno, made contact having learned that the baroness, aged 63, had scrolls on her walls painted with scenes from the
Odyssey. After the First World War, Antoinette became deeply in debt due to failed business ventures and high-risk investments to which she was prone and even began to engage in
smuggling between Italy and Switzerland, where her islands became the ideal base. Finding herself in a precarious debt situation she was forced to sell the islands in 1926. She moved first to
Ascona and then to
Intragna, where she lived a somewhat destitute life until her death, on 24 January 1948.
Max Emden In 1926,
Hamburg department store magnate
Max Emden purchased the islands, demolished the existing house and replaced it with a
Palazzo style villa, designed by the Berlin architect
Alfred Breslauer. The villa had 24 rooms, a conservatory and a 33-metre-long Roman-style bathing pool. While not interested in botany and gardening, Emden preserved the existing garden and vegetation, undertaking the necessary maintenance. Emden continued the baroness's exotic partying, entertaining young ladies who would water-ski and dance naked in the garden. Emden lived on the islands until his death in a clinic in Locarno in 1940.
Purchase by the public In 1949, Emden's son Hans Erich, who had emigrated to Chile accepted an offer from a consortium consisting of the Canton Ticino, the municipalities of Ascona, Brissago and Ronco sopra Ascona, plus the Swiss Nature Protection League (known today as the Swiss Heritage Society) to purchase the islands. The purchase agreement was signed on 2 September 1949. On the morning of 2 April 1950 the Brissago Islands were opened to the public. ==Parco botanico del Canton Ticino==