Back in the Sixties, when the boom was on and the notion of holiday houses finally reached Italy, most people looking for a summer retreat would buy a strip of land in a suitable place and build their own brand-new house there. A villa with a swimming pool (possibly with a vista as well) was the best idea of a second home one could imagine. Elena Bagnara and her daughter Grazia Olga Aggio, who lived in Milano but came from a family rooted in Veneto, halfway between Padova and Rovigo, chose instead to retrieve an ancient farmers’ house, Corte dei Capitani di Sopra, dating from the eighteenth century (or possibly earlier), with no running water (except the one coming up a well) and no electricity, owned by the Curia of Verona and lived in by peasants. The ground floor was home to cows and donkeys and comprised the main kitchen; on the upper floor there were the bedrooms and a large, pleasant room used for balls, parties and meetings; other bedrooms were tucked in the attic.

The name Capitani dates from ancient times: pirates plagued the lake waters, and the village of Bardolino was just a tiny basis for fishing. At night people came up the hills to sleep safely, and the Capitani, the masters of the lake, officers named by the government of Venezia, La Serenissima, kept watch on them.

The renovation took years and it was tackled at a slow pace, allowing Elena and Grazia to consider every single step with no rush in order to get the best results. First came water, and the bathrooms; then the barn was converted into the small house, the casetta across the portico (and the portico itself, which originally was not there, was erected as a link between the buildings); then came the furnishings, picked among family heirlooms and antiques in order to give the house a distinct cosy feeling; a big swimming pool was built for exercise and sunbathing.

(Just a reassuring detail: the white stone inlaid into the floor of the living room is not a tombstone complete with ghost as one could think; it is a stone inscription celebrating long forgotten events. Try and decipher it if you are well versed in Latin and abbreviations (good luck).

As for the vista, it was there, wonderful, widespread and ever changing: the peninsula of Sirmione, home to the Latin poet Catullus, and the lower Garda on the left; the Rocca and behind it Punta San Vigilio, with a well-known locanda that hosted Winston Churchill, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh among others, on the right; Salò and Gardone, with the Vittoriale, home to the aesthete, poet and writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, just in front. If you look at the highest mountain on the opposite shore you will notice it holds a stunning resemblance to a man’s face. It is said French soldiers engaged in war looked at it and said Aigu!, sharp, recognizing in it the profile of their leader Napoleon. The name - Monte Gu - stuck, and Napoleon is in fact another looming presence around here (if you scour the countryside behind the lake you’ll find plenty of inscriptions on houses claiming he slept there. It seems he slept quite a lot in between battles - and took wonderful baths in his personal portable bathtub also). The big enchanted island you can see on the left is called Isola di Garda; Saint Francis stayed there around 1220 and deemed it the ideal place for a hermitage, which was therefore built by his monks.

In crystal-clear days you feel you can almost touch all of this; in hazy days you cannot even see the opposite shore and the Lago di Garda looks and feels like the sea. Spectacular sunsets and velvety twilights are a sight one can never get used to. Mind, it is not even worth taking photos: the original is always much better, and the best thing it to catch the moment sipping an aperitivo and relaxing with small talk or enjoying the silence, instead of frantically strolling around with phones and cameras.

Elena Bagnara, at the time in her fifties, came to spend more and more of her time at the house, which served also as a holiday house for Grazia, her husband Riccardo and their children. Elena left Bardolino only in the harshest months of winter to stay in Milano and enjoy classic music, theatre and close friends, otherwise leading a contented, rich country life among books (the ones still lining bookshelves), plants and flowers, inviting over friends and relatives for pleasant stays. The garden shaping took much time as well, and was renovated in the late Nineties by Grazia. All around the house there are olive fields and vineyards, and at the back the property embraces woods thick with oak trees and shrubberies. Hares, pheasants and the occasional squirrel, fox and badger stroll in the fields and meadows. Owls, tawny owls, buzzards, hoopoes fly and cackle around all day and night. Woodpeckers seem to have taken a fancy to our shutters: the perfectly rounded holes you can see on some of them are their masterpiece and gracious gift to us. Stay alert for sightings, or at least listen to their voices and try and guess who is passing by.

Elena is the woman in the portrait above the fireplace in the salotto giallo (the yellow lounge). I Capitani still is a family house, hosting Grazia, her children and their families, and occasionally those guests (like you) who seek a quiet, secluded holiday away from the madding summer crowds (albeit perfectly reachable down the road in Bardolino, should one be eager for a change). Its history and tradition call for respect, and we kindly ask you to take all of this in while enjoying your stay.