Description of the attraction
Arco Castle, located in the town of the same name on the shores of Lake Garda, is not a full-fledged castle, but just the ruins of an ancient fortress. The exact date of its construction is unknown, but historians suggest that the castle existed already in the 11th century.
The area around the castle was inhabited back in the Middle Ages - the village of Arco was founded there. Probably, it was the inhabitants of the village who built the fortress on the top of the cliff. Only later did it become the property of the noble family of the Counts of Arco. They tried to destroy the castle many times, especially the Venetian Republic. In 1495, it was painted by the great German artist Albrecht Durer, thanks to which we can still see how the castle looked in those distant times.
After the French siege of 1703, Arco Castle was abandoned. For some time, it even served as a kind of quarry - the inhabitants of the surrounding villages took it apart in parts and built houses for themselves. Only in our time, in the 1980s, the castle was bought by the city municipality, and a thorough restoration began within its walls, as a result of which numerous ancient frescoes of the 14th century were discovered depicting knights and court ladies of the Middle Ages. The well-preserved drawings show hunting scenes, a game of chess, the dragon defeated by St. George, the induction of a knight and a lady weaving a wreath of roses.
