Museo Territoriale del Lago di Garda "Luigi Carlo Bertamé"

In the courtyard of Garda's town hall, the Museo Territoriale del Lago di Garda "Luigi Carlo Bertamè" presents boats, nets, tools and trades from the working shore, collected by schoolteacher Luigi Carlo Bertamè.

Why it matters

Lake Garda's larger museums deal in art and archaeology; this one deals in labour. Founded as a civic institution in 1981 and re-opened in its modern home on 7 May 2011, the museum preserves what industrial change erased: the gear of fishermen, quarrymen, farmers and carpenters who worked the Veronese shore into the mid-twentieth century. Its story is inseparable from Luigi Carlo Bertamè, the young teacher who began collecting in 1966, and from the volunteer association that has supported the museum since 2013. In 2020 the town council gave it his name. Its subject is the relationship between the lake, its olive groves and the hills above San Vigilio.

What to notice

The exhibition fills four rooms organised in eight sections: agriculture, crafts, animal husbandry, quarrying and folklore on the raised floor; fishing, the conservation of fish and lake transport on the storey above. Highlights are concrete rather than precious. A restored gondolino — the small lake fishing boat — anchors the fishing room, surrounded by nets, harpoons and the tackle of traditional catch methods, including a "forô" used for tench and eel. The quarrying section recalls the quarries above San Vigilio with a stone ice-crusher and a quarry cart. Most striking of all is the reconstruction, partly with original pieces, of the Pal del Vo: the great navigation pole that the town's ancient fishermen's corporation once moored between Punta San Vigilio and Sirmione to mark the safest line across the lake. The collection also includes the original clock mechanism of Garda's Torre dell'Orologio, loaned from the tower's restoration.

Context and history

The museum began in 1966 as a school project: Bertamè, fascinated by the natural and human history of the Benaco, started collecting objects already falling out of use, announcing a "Museo del Lago" through the local press that September. The collection grew through storerooms and classrooms — a school cupboard, then a whole classroom, then the basement of a lakeside building where full-size boats were kept — until the town council formally instituted the Museo del Lago in 1981. A decisive push came in 2009, when a major grant from Fondazione Cariverona and an agreement with the CTG association enabled the modern installation; the museum opened on 7 May 2011 in the Palazzetto delle Esposizioni beside the Municipio. The council renamed it the Territorial Museum of Lake Garda in 2018 and dedicated it to its founder in 2020. Bertamè, born in 1936, died in November 2020, weeks before the dedication was formalised.