Benacense Yearbook “Il Garda” Highlights Local Research and History
And with this, they reach sixteen: tomorrow at 6:30 PM, at the Taverna bar in the town square, the Centro studi per il territorio benacense will present the sixteenth edition, freshly printed, of the yearbook “Il Garda. L’ambiente, l’uomo”.
The presentation takes place within the framework of the “literary cafes” scheduled as part of the rich program for Christmas among the olive trees, and it is bound to attract the attention of the well-established audience of the journal of historical-environmental studies of the Centro directed by Giuliano Sala.
Content and articles of the new issue
In fact, this new issue of the Benacense miscellany contains quite a lot of interesting material.
The volume opens with a research paper by Piercarlo Belotti, a Brescia-based botanist, on the presence of asparagus acutifolius along the Garda shore, the wild asparagus, which the people of Garda call colloquially sparasina.
However, Belotti’s article also provides an opportunity to take stock of the cultivation of asparagus on the morainic hills of Rivoli and Cavaion.
Daniele Zanini has authored a curious study on the tumor formations that affected the plane trees in Piazza Roma (the square near the church) at Garda.
Then we move to the historical section with an engaging text by Giuliano Sala, investigating an “assassination in the land of the canons”: the chronicle of a bloodshed that took place between Calmasino and Cavaion in July 1208.
Focus on local history and memories
In a comprehensive chapter, Pierpaolo Brugnoli discusses the history and the artistic and architectural merits of Villa Miniscalchi-Treves, now Villa dei Cedri (with its thermal center) in Colà di Lazise.
Marina Repetto Contaldo reflects on the memories of Don Domenico Sartori, an extremely active parish priest of Torri in the 1700s (who among other things was responsible for deciding to build the new parish church).
As the author highlights, the memories of the parish priest of Torri have been “plundered” several times by various authors, but never fully transcribed: this time, the gap has been filled, and the reading is quite engaging, for example when it describes an “inconvenience” caused between the parish communities of Torri and Albisano due to ancient rights connected with rogations, or when it mentions the “renovation” of the vow to San Filippo Neri.
Analysis of tourism and social life
Valeria Recchia, in the following article, focuses on what she calls the “great transformation,” namely the rise of tourism in Benaco around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.
The analysis of the “réclames” from the early 1900s is particularly interesting: how Garda was presented to the tourist markets of the time.
Pier Giuseppe Pasini writes about investigations conducted in the 19th century regarding the quality of food consumed by the populations of Brescia’s Garda: “The life of the farmer and the worker” was very meager, mainly based on maize eaten daily with vegetables, legumes, and little fish,” said Pietro Marchiori, a civil engineer, in 1881.
Deepening on culture and architecture
In the third section of the volume, besides Domenico Fava’s “Garda bibliography,” stands a work by Pierlorenzo Vantini on Carlo Scarpa, particularly on the ingenious design of Villa Ottolenghi in Bardolino. (a.p.)