Terrazza del Brivido

A concrete balcony hangs past the cliff edge at Pieve, 350 metres straight above Lake Garda. Built in the 1950s beside the Hotel Paradiso, the Terrazza del Brivido frames the lake's first hairpin bends, the Brasa gorge and, on clear days, Monte Baldo.

Why it matters

At Pieve the plateau that carries Tremosine's hamlets simply stops, falling several hundred metres to the water. On that break the municipality's most famous belvedere was laid out between the 1950s and the 1960s, and it still does what few viewpoints attempt: a plain concrete platform extending beyond the cliff with a low parapet. The regional tourism portal for Lake Garda counts it among the most spectacular and photographed views on the whole lake, describing it as a panoramic balcony that juts into thin air. The platform stands on the grounds of the Hotel Paradiso, a detail that links the viewpoint to the area's history of lake tourism.

What to notice

The terrace is more than 350 metres above the lake, with views of the first hairpins of the Strada della Forra and the hamlet of Campione. The Torrente Brasa has cut the Val di Brasa into the rock below. Across the water, Monte Baldo marks the horizon on clear days. The plain platform frames water, cliff and sky.

Context and history

The viewpoint was built in the 1950s and 1960s, in the decades when motor tourism along the Gardesana road turned the upper lake into a destination, on the grounds of the Hotel Paradiso at Pieve. The hotel has been associated with the terrace ever since, and its name — brivido, the shiver of excitement — records exactly what its builders intended visitors to feel. Pieve had reason to cultivate its belvedere culture: the hamlet sits on the cliff's brink at over 400 metres, and its church square and houses already faced the lake from above. What the terrace added was the sensation of the drop itself, and the viewpoint has remained a landmark of the Brescian shore for about seventy years.