Regia Nave Puglia

Halfway up the Vittoriale's park a full-sized warship prow juts from the hillside, embedded in garden terraces as if the cruiser were steaming out of the slope. It is the bow of the Regia Nave Puglia, a real Regia Marina vessel sectioned in a navy yard and rebuilt above Lake Garda as d'Annunzio's most improbable monument.

Why it matters

The Puglia is a genuine piece of naval history repositioned as poetry. By 1923 the veteran cruiser's long career was over, and Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, then Navy Minister, proposed to the Council of Ministers that its prow be given to d'Annunzio together with the MAS 96 motorboat of the 1918 "Beffa di Buccari"; the telegram announcing unanimous approval reached the poet on 16 March 1923, close on the heels of his sixtieth birthday. Moving the relic was a considerable feat for the time: the hull was cut, and the prow travelled roughly three hundred kilometres by rail from La Spezia on some twenty wagons, completing the last leg by military truck. On 24 July 1925 the work of setting the bow into the hill was finished, with the stem aimed at the Adriatic it once patrolled.

What to notice

The deck preserves the ship’s rails, bollards, capstans and plating, while the surrounding garden replaces the sea; the ship has no engine room and is set among terraced gardens, with Lake Garda beyond it rather than the Adriatic the bow faces symbolically. On the prow stands Renato Brozzi's bronze group La Vittoria angolare, added in 1928. The placement also commemorates Captain Tommaso Gulli, mortally wounded off Spalato on 10 July 1920, a death that weighed heavily on d'Annunzio. Nearby, beached on the slope like a small companion craft, lies the MAS 96, the anti-submarine motorboat of the Buccari enterprise, which was first housed in the darsena of nearby Torre San Marco — still Vittoriale property — and later served the poet for pleasure outings on the lake.

Context and history

The Puglia had flown the Italian flag on long-distance service since the early years of the century, and d'Annunzio wanted exactly such naval memorabilia for the museum of relics he was assembling at Gardone. The gift became part of the estate's grand scenography: the bow was reassembled on a stone spur laid out for it — the poet had already pictured "a plateau stretched in the form of a prow" — under the direction of Lieutenant Fortunato Silla with Gian Carlo Maroni. A century later the Foundation marked the centenary with a year of events: on 8 March 2025 the ceremony "Salpa verso il mondo" opened D'Annunzio Marinaio, a renewed Museo di Bordo inside the ship presenting Marina Militare photographs, relics and historic ship models connected with Aimone di Savoia Aosta, while the anniversary was celebrated again that summer at the festival in Pescara with a book dedicated to the vessel.