Tourist!

The exhibition offers an in-depth reflection on the genesis of the tourism phenomenon in the Lake Garda, an area that in the course of the nineteenth century was transformed from a simple place of passage to a true destination of choice for the Grand Tour. The exhibition explores how the landscape of Lake Garda has been interpreted by the gaze of travellers of the Northern Europe, who saw this basin as a magical threshold, not yet fully Mediterranean but already far removed from Alpine atmospheres.

Through a careful selection of travel notebooks, printed views e watercolours, the exhibition highlights the transition from travel as a cultural education to the inner experience typical of the Romanticism. Among the masterpieces on display is the complete series of fifteen views by the Swiss Jakob Wetzel in 1824, first exhibited in its entirety in Italy. Visitors can admire objects that bear witness to everyday life on the move, such as cases, toilet facilities and fine garments of Fashion and Costume that delineate the social identity of the Belle Époque.

Unpublished documents, period photographs e billboards complete this choral narrative, edited by Paolo Boifava e Maria Paola Pasini in collaboration with Attilio Brilli. The exhibition explores the construction of the collective imagination of a place that became an international symbol of health, beauty and holidaying, before the trauma of the Great War put an end to this unrepeatable season.