Comune di Gardone Riviera

Gardone Riviera is a small town of around 2700 inhabitants situated on the Brescia side of Lake Garda. The town extends from the shoreline stretch, where the vegetation is typically Mediterranean, to the hills behind where the delicate pale green of the olive trees contrasts the intense green of the cypress trees.

Gardone has always been famous for its splendid walks which allow tourists to stroll inland along pathways offering breathtaking views surrounded by nature, peace and quiet and far from the noise of traffic.

Thanks to the mountain range protecting the town  from  the  cold  north  winds, its position facing south and the lake’s waters, the climate is particularly mild. The average yearly temperature is 13.3 degrees Celsius, it never drops below zero and the summers seldom exceed 30 degrees.  The climate’s mildness and the numerous springs have permitted the planting of various plants and trees: in fact the vegetation alternates from the typically local species through to Middle European, Mediterranean and sub-tropical variations.  Here the citrus, cypress and olive tree essences merge extraordinarily with splendid palms, camphor and cedar trees, bougainvilleas and agaves and it is indeed thanks to the abundant and varied vegetation that still today Gardone is called a “garden town”.

This green haven, accessible to tourists and citizens alike, is rated among the first on Italy’s list of  beauty spots. Not only its characteristic scenery and lush gardens but also its architectural heritage of historical villas, its museums, and the refined atmosphere of its hotels which evoke memories of the belle époque, all go towards making Gardone Riviera one of the most beautiful and elegant resorts on Lake Garda.

In the past

It was thanks to the inspiration of a couple of men from the North that modern Gardone was born. In fact it was due to them that tourism in Gardone was conceived together with tourism on Lake Garda which until then was an unknown land to Italians and foreigners.

Enterprising and competent German doctors came to Gardone in the early 1880s and struck by its climate and beauty they developed a health resort. They were successful beyond all expectations. Already, at the close of that century, Gardone had become a favourite with the international elite. In Grand Hotel the American railway tycoon and the Grand Duke of St. Petersburg sat side by side at the table d’hôte while in Villa Wimmer King George of Sachsen rested from the tribulations caused by his daughter in law, Luisa of Tuscany.

It is therefore not surprising if Gabriele d’Annunzio also loved the town despite having lived in great cities like Florence, Rome and Paris. It was following his military feat at Fiume when, in 1921, the fifty-eight year old  “Blind Prophet”, already resplendent with his country’s glory and his own literary merits, saw that marvellous corner of paradise called Gardone. It was love at first sight. It was then that the reception rooms in Grand Hotel were turned into antechambers and for 17 years were used by titled ladies, publishers and statesmen waiting to be received at the Vittoriale where the “Comandante” had left the most masterly and eccentric mark of his life on earth.

Then, for almost 20 dramatic months of the so called “Salò Republic”, Gardone was the place where the decisions that were made affected most Italians’ destiny. From October 1943 to April 1945 the Third Reich had one of its seats in Fasano, a hamlet in Gardone, not far from its ally’s HQ, Mussolini, head of the Salò Republic. Once again it was the important men of that time, or those who thought they were, who had free access to and from Gardone.

Following the Second World War, Wimmer Square was as fashionable as Capri Square. One could meet Winston Churchill, who in 1949 in the privacy of Grand Hotel put the finishing touches to his speech for the opening of the Council of Europe, or his fellow countryman Somerset Maugham who always used to spend a month’s holiday in Gardone before proceeding to Venice and almost twenty years later, in 1965, his Russian-American colleague, Vladimir Nabokov who would amuse himself in Gardone catching butterflies.