Fort Belvedere

“I will be enough for Trento!” was the motto of Fort Belvedere/Gschwent, a defensive bastion of southern Trentino against the Italian army. It suffered a heavy bombardment in the early days of the war but, despite the losses, the “Valdastico sentinel” remained firmly in Austrian hands.

Built between 1908 and 1914, it was the only one of seven strongholds in the highlands’ fortified belt not to be demolished in the ’30s to recover the iron: King Vittorio Emanuele III decided to let it stand as a warning to future generations. It is one of the best preserved Austro-Hungarian forts, and hosts a museum devoted to the Great War, recently enriched with multimedia installations: the “Fortress of Emotions” provides an experience worth trying, highly evocative and intense, based on the reconstruction of the soldiers’ perceptions through light, sound and voices.