Il Porto

The current port probably dates back to 1439, following the conquest of Nago and Torbole implemented by the Republic of Venice the previous year. These were years when this was at war with the Visconti of Milan. To bring help to Brescia, besieged by the Milanese, Venice, since the latter, masters of the castles of Peschiera and Desenzano. They controlled the land route, devised a plan to circumvent the obstacle: bring on the lake, through its territories, a fleet up to Torbole, attack Desenzano by surprise, cut the road to those of Peschiera and then reach Brescia. In January 1439, then, a fleet of 33 boats, including 8, between galleys and frigates, and 25 other boats more modest used to transport what was needed for the good end of the expedition, took the mouth of the Adige and up the river to Mori. Following the fleet were hundreds of slaves (the rowers), workers and artisans employed in the preparation of the roads. From Mori to Torbole the flotilla, dragged on tree trunks by the force of slaves, local volunteers and 2000 oxen, advanced on the wooden table that served as a road. The most critical stretch was undoubtedly the one between Passo San Giovanni and Torbole. The steep descent, however, was overcome thanks to the winches secured to the olive trees and, as is said, even at the hour, south wind, which, hoisted the sails, held the race down. In the meantime, a port structure was to have been built on the lake to provide shelter for the larger boats and space for the port’s activities. In Torbole there was a port, documented since 1192, the year in which the community of Nago and Torbole obtained from the prince-bishop of Trento, feudal lord directly dependent on the emperor, the right “to weigh and measure everything that passes through the port of Torbole establishing the price they owe for this work”. It was, however, a very modest port that occupied the space in which the Gardens are now located (Piazza degli Alpini). Most probably, therefore, with the arrival of the Venetians, this port was enlarged westwards where the shallow waters bathed by the murky waters. (aquae turbulae, that is the “waters TÓRBOLE’, from which comes the name of the country) of the Sarca delta made it possible to obtain easily, perhaps even with appropriate piling work as had been done in Venice, the necessary spaces for housing and construction. After the departure of the Venetians (1509), the harbour activity lost in part its importance. Only in the second half of the eighteenth century, at the time of Maria Theresa, the port of Torbole, the only port of the Empire on Lake Garda (Riva was the port of the bishopric of Trento) experienced a flourishing period that lasted until the mid-nineteenth century when he had to deal with the railway Verona-Bolzano, inaugurated in 1859. Goods from the Po Valley began to take the fast via ferrata, abandoning the slow lake transports. The final blow to the Torbola economy came from the construction of the Mori-Arco-Riva railway (1891) that did not touch Torbole. In the port gradually disappeared the boats that gave way to the fishing boats and for the recreation of tourists who began to flow on the shores of the lake more and more. The isolation ended in 1929 with the construction of the Gardesana Orientale, which, however, abandoned the project to make it pass upstream of the country, has irreparably devastated the port and the beaches. With the creation, on 10 September 1943, of the Operationszone Alpenvorland (Prealpine Operational Zone) Trentino, and therefore also Torbole, was governed until the end of April 1945, by a German Supreme Commissioner directly dependent on Hitler. In the last months of the war the port hosted an Italian mini-submarine managed by the German navy – a command of which was housed at the hotel Benaco -, in order to study, and eventually realize, the laying of a row of underwater mines between Limone and Navene. The vessel was sunk before the Americans of the Mountain Division arrived in Torbole on 30 April 1945. On the same day, since the Gardesana was not passable because the supplies had been blown and the change for the fighters was guaranteed by DUKW amphibious vehicles.