Gino Bonetti Memorial Plaque Unveiled at Torri Castle Honoring Mayor and Lawyer’s Legacy in Torri Community
A commemorative plaque for Gino Bonetti, lawyer and former mayor of Torri who purchased the Scaligero Castle, now a symbol of the town. It will be installed and officially unveiled tomorrow at 4:30 PM in the council chamber of the castle. The plaque, prepared by the group “Gli amici di Gino Bonetti”, commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the death of the local leader who, for 25 years, guided the fate of the small lakeside community.
Around ten members of the group have decided to pay tribute with this “enduring memory” to the mayor-lawyer, as they described him in a booklet produced recently by two of his closest friends and admirers: Nereo Maffezzoli and Professor Giuseppe Pimazzoni, former mayor of Garda. It was Professor Pimazzoni, a former principal of the Maffei High School in Verona, who initiated the idea of writing a booklet to remember lawyer Bonetti.
The friends and the historical context
Both elected as mayors in 1951—Pimazzoni in Garda and Bonetti in Torri—they became friends and later promoted the “cordial understanding” among all the mayors of the lakeside municipalities on the Verona side of Garda.
“It was a period,” explained the now octogenarian Giuseppe Pimazzoni in the booklet, “when all the lakeside towns of Verona, except Peschiera and Malcesine, which elected retired fascist General Alberto Pariani as mayor, were governed by Christian Democracy mayors. Hence, the idea of the ‘cordial understanding,’ a sort of agreement among mayors to identify and resolve communal problems jointly, especially urgent and heavy in the immediate post-war period.
The “cordial understanding” allowed for the modernization of the municipalities, essential to overcome the underdevelopment and poverty that the Veronese shoreline faced, even compared to the more advanced areas of Brescia and Trentino.”
Public works and the purchase of the castle
Among the many public projects overseen during the 25 years Gino Bonetti led the Municipality of Torri, reports mention numerous urban interventions crucial for the town center and the districts of Pai and Albisano. These include the construction of the nursery, aqueducts, roads to Pai di Sotto, Ca’ Tronconi, Ca’ Barcelle, the Casetta, the purchase of the sports field area, and much more.
All this occurred in an era when, unlike today, mobility, money, and culture were scarce. Nonetheless, the most significant “gift” — in the literal sense — that the mayor, who died of cancer in 1981, left to Torri was the purchase of the Scaliger Castle, on December 19, 1973.
The fortress, built by Antonio della Scala in 1383, had changed hands multiple times before the municipality, influenced by Bonetti, managed to acquire it from owner Giuseppina Arduini in Cristofori, thereby making it its own.
The symbol and relevance of the tribute
“With tomorrow’s ceremony,” states Torri’s current mayor Alberto Vedovelli, “we intend to pay a rightful tribute to a person who truly contributed a lot to this community. Although I did not personally know him, many of the works he initiated remain with us today, offering well-being and avenues for social and economic development through tourism in Torri.”
Finally, another “gift” for the community of Torri, recently delivered by Gino Bonetti’s wife, Ellis Vinci, to Mayor Vedovelli: forty-nine law books from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, on which the lawyer studied, destined for the Municipal Library.
