Gardone Riviera - History

Gardone is the most famous and the first holiday resort of Lake Garda. It was founded as a tourist destination in 1879 by the German, Luigi Wimmer, with the opening of a boarding house called "Pizzocolo" that gradually expanded to become the Grand Hotel Gardone.

Solitro writes that you could call it a small village, so great it was, with its 200 rooms all facing the Lake.

"The first guests arrived by train at Mori, from there a bus carried them to Riva, where a boat took them to Gardone. The ships were full, each trip bringing hundreds of passengers whilst a crowd of waiters, porters and scamps assist in the movement. The small square is full of people, baggage and vehicles. In the hotel and in the villa, everything is working, orders are given and rooms assigned. At the end of December, the resort is full, hotels and villas are fully booked but every day more people continue to arrive, hungry for blue skies and sunshine".

In Fasano the Roman tombstones were found. In Gardone Sopra there are ruins of a castle with a chapel dedicated to St. Michael, the archangel, dear to Longobards.

Gardone soon became the most favourite place of many artists, among them the painter Gregory Sciltian and the sculptor Francesco Messina. After the war, even Sir Winston Churchill spent a period here.

The Vittoriale is one of the major attractions in Gardone. It was created in 1923 by the architect Giancarlo Maroni and its construction continued even after the death of  D'Annunzio. It stood on an area of nine hectares, including the ancient villa Cargnacco, orignaly Wimmer's residence and then the residence of the German critic of art Ernst Thode. There, the poet gathered his memories: the ship "Puglia", the anti-Mas 96 motorboat used for sinking the Austrian battleship Viribus Unitis during the so-called "Beffa di Buccari" (10-11 February 1918), the plane of the legendary flight over Vienna (9 August 1918), the Isotta-Fraschini and the Fiat Torpedo used to reach Fiume during the shipment of 1919, the rocks of the mountains of the Great War. There is also the outdoor theatre, capable of holding 1500 people. But the jewel of the Vittoriale is the Schifamondo, the house-museum that D'Annunzio gave order to build even though he always prefered to live in villa Cargnacco. He called it Priory and gave its rooms the names like the World Map, Leda and Music.

There is the botanical garden Hruska: in Gardone Riviera, founded at the beginning of the 900 by Arturo Hruska, explorer and physician. Hruska, who was also the dentist of the Czar, has bought together about 2 thousand varieties of plants and flowers in an area of one hectare full of paths, rocks and waterfalls.

Then there is the Torre San Marco, in front of Villa Alba, the dock of Gabriele d'Annunzio.

The villa was supposed to host the empress of Austria but the outbreak of the First World War prevented anything.  Next to the tower is the red Villa Fiordaliso, home to Claretta Petacci, the lover of Mussolini, during the Republic of Salò.