Vittoriale degli Italiani

House Museum Lake Garda, Italy

The Vittoriale degli Italiani is a hillside estate in the town of Gardone Riviera overlooking the Garda lake in the province of Brescia, Lombardy. It is where the Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio lived after his defenestration in 1922 until his death in 1938. The estate consists of the residence of d'Annunzio called the Prioria (priory), an amphitheater, the protected cruiser Puglia set into a hillside, a boathouse containing the MAS vessel used by D'Annunzio in 1918 and a circular mausoleum. Its grounds are now part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani. References to the Vittoriale range from a “monumental citadel” to a “fascist luna park”, the site inevitably inheriting the controversy surrounding its creator.