Rovereto

Rovereto was an unexpected surprise. We had been to Trento a couple of days before & were disappointed by what we found. Maybe it’s just that we went to Trento on the Monday, early closing day in Italy so most of the place was closed and very quiet. Any city without its bustle tends to loose its energy & character. Whilst this had made it very quiet, our only real 

The giant goose

excitement was the giant goose in the Piazza Dante. It is known for its frescoes and yet they seemed dull by comparison with the fresh vibrantly painted ones in Molveno itself. However, in Trento we had managed to find tourist info which had given us a good street map of Rovereto.

So the next day, we set off to Rovereto. By Tuesday all the everyday bustle of shopping was on. We started by visiting the MART (Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea). It’s a huge place, worthy of several hours, if not days, of visiting. We decided to start at the top & work our way down.

This floor held items from the permanent exhibits. So we started with statues which made sounds from within them, musical tones though not exactly something you could call music. We continued on. We discovered something about the Futurist movement - something neither of us knew much about - and its association with the inter-war Fascist movement & Mussolini.

Our biggest difficulty was that you went from room to room in a sort of maze. It was impossible to get out without going through all the rooms. There were no seats except those which were clearly exhibits not to be sat on. By the end we hurried through suffering from sensory overloads &, in the case of the Fox, a distinct limp as he had had to walk so far with nowhere to sit.

 

The Piazza Rosmini, the main square

 

When we managed to find our way we walked the short distance into the town centre and found ourselves a quiet bar for a sit down & some refreshment. It was a pleasant square just round the corner from tourist info where we were intending to make a few enquiries about access & see if we could get some street maps of other nearby towns such as Riva del Garda.

We discovered that unfortunately we would not be able to get into the town’s main museum in the castle. They would let us see the basement free as there was so little we could get to see with the wheelchair. So off we headed to the castle. Even what little we could see struck home. We just wish more had been accessible.

The castle

 

A cannon from the First World War

The museum is dedicated to the First World War. It’s strange I never tend to think of the Italian participation in that war, the second yes, the first no. Equally I think of the Western Front & the terrible battles on the Somme etc, the Gallipoli campaign, even the eastern front with the Russians, abandoned as the Russian Revolution began, but never this front between Austria & Italy. Yet here there was a 40-day siege before the castle finally fell to the Austrians. Thousands were killed. Yet more were killed in the trenches up in the Dolomite Mountains. I suspect just the winter weather up there was sufficient to kill many, certainly to give them problems from frostbite.

On the outskirts of Rovereto, on the Colle di Miravelle, the Campana dei Caduti bell tings out 100 times every day at sundown in memory of all victims of war. The bell, the biggest ringing bell in the world, was made from cannons of the 19 belligerents in the First World War melted down.

All in all we felt it had been a worthwhile visit.