Toscolano-Maderno

Toscolano-Maderno sits on a wide flat fan on the western shore of Lake Garda, where two old villages, Toscolano and Maderno, face each other across the river that gives the valley its name. They were stitched into a single commune only in 1928, and the split is still legible on the ground: Maderno holds the older administrative and religious weight, Toscolano the industrial valley behind it. Maderno was once the capital of the Magnifica Patria della Riviera di Salò, until Beatrice della Scala moved the seat to Salò in the 14th century.

The town's administrative standing never returned, but paper filled the gap. Mills had already been working the Toscolano river since around 1300, and by the 15th and 16th centuries they were supplying the printers of the Venetian Republic, their sheets marked with an ox-head watermark and sent out as far as royal libraries. What is left today is a town whose center of gravity moved once, from government to manufacture, and left physical evidence of both: an old civic and religious core in Maderno, an industrial valley cut into the hillside behind Toscolano, and a shoreline that now does the plain work of a lake town, swimming and the ferry crossing, once the mills and the magistrates had both gone quiet.

From Milan Bergamo (BGY), about 1 h 24 min by car.

Verona (VRN) is about 1 h 25 min away.

By car from the center of Brescia 56 min or Trento 1 h 38 min.

Coming by train into Brescia? Toscolano-Maderno is about 55 min away by road.

Every town within reach of Milan Bergamo airport.

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