Gardone Riviera, Lago di Garda

Another place that is great for a stroll along the promenade. This is the more classy place on the western fringes with large grand hotels. The boat to here is very popular. This place is big enough to spend a full day if you take in the two attractions inland - the botanical gardens and the Vitoriale del Haliani. If it is a choice between the gardens and the villa take the villa which is better value and you are likely to spend more time there.

We only passed by this place, which ia actually a community made up by eight towns! Two of the villages are on the lake, while the rest sit on the hill. There are a couple of mountains and the surrounding is rather rough and woodcovered. So here you can find many walking paths and trails.

The village itself has a huge variety of exotic vegetation: cedars, magnolias, palm trees, etc. so that makes Gardone an internationally famous "garden city". Villas and hotels surrounded by large parks on the shore have preserved their original 19th century style, which you can even experience from the ferry.

The "Vittoriale degli Italiani" is the monumental Citadel created by D'Annunzio between 1921 and 1938, when he moved to Gardone Riviera, on the Brescia side of the Garda Lake.
It is not only a house, but a complex made of buildings, streets, squares, gardens, parks and rivers.

You can also find there a vessel called MAS (it means antisubmarine, but D'Annunzio meant "Memento Audere Semper" - remember to dare always), transported to Vittoriale on 1925.
On the same year, about twenty railways carriages carried the stern of the ship Puglia to Gardone, where it was rassembled and placed on the promontory called "la Fida".