The Vittoriale degli Italiani is Gabriele D’Annunzio’s nine-hectare monument to Gabriele D’Annunzio. Created above Lake Garda from 1921, it contains his darkened house, 33,000 books and thousands of objects arranged according to a private system of symbols and mottos. The entrance has separate waiting rooms for welcome and unwelcome guests; the dining room displays a tortoise that supposedly died from overeating. Outside are D’Annunzio’s aeroplane, a torpedo boat and the prow of the warship Puglia, transported in pieces on twenty railway carriages and rebuilt in the hillside.
Vittoriale degli Italiani
