TORBOLE

His resort is the capital of the Nago-Torbole district and appears on a fascinating bay, on lake eastern bank. People coming from Nago, along the road descending to the lake by steep hairpin bend, can admire an incredibly fine sight.

The house's roofs, gathered near to the shore, stand out the green of the fields and create a chromatic contrast with Garda water which reflects the deep blue sky tonalities. Torbole has written an indelible page of the naval history of the fifteenth cent. In may 1440 Venetian people, to help Riva which was then under Visconti control, and to lighten Milan people pressure over Brescian's, devised brilliant diverging ropes which caught the enemies and cost them a bad defeat on the water' lake. Once gone up the Adige course, by a fleet which was then dismantled and brought to Torbole, with the help of hundred of oxen, they reassembled again the wooden pieces which, once put in the lake, won shortly the Visconti forces.

In the end of the 1786 summer Goethe, starting his travel in Italy, stopped in Torbole, leaving in his writings a longing and passionate image of this place which is still now the best way to promote the resort to the large number of German guests. Between the most famous Torbole's tourist attraction we have to mention the memorial tablet and the Goethe image which are on the arcade of the building where Goethe was, there is also a Goethe's bust along the lake. The parish S. Andrea church is divided into three naves and keeps a fine wooden chorus. The most artistically significant element is, with no doubt, the wonderful eighteenth canvas made by G.B. Cignaroli representing the S. Andrea Martyr.

A pleasant walk brings to the ruins of Penede castle, which was destroyed in the eigteenth cent. and that was already owned by the Arco earls, by the Castelbanco's and by Serenissima Republic. An element which excite naturalists and geologists, can be admired at the hairpin bend of the road that brings to Nago: the so called Marmitte of the Giants representing the tangible glacial era evidence of erosive phenomenon, which occurred when a wide glacier covered the territories.

Those so called Marmitte are nothing else then sunken glacial era wells, set out by the stones and glacial, quick whirling, detritus coming down from the superior layers. We have to mention, at last, Torbole for its importance for sailing sports: it is because of the good and constant blowing of the winds on this portion of the lake.
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