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QC Grand Hotel Villa Arzaga Garda Spa & Golf
Calvagese della Riviera, Italy · QC Terme · Near Luxury
Baron Lando Lanni della Quara bought a half-abandoned Renaissance palace in the hills behind Lake Garda in the 1960s. It had been a country estate, a monastery and a silk works; he turned it into a hotel, and in 1998 a golf course arrived around it, eighteen holes by Jack Nicklaus II and nine by Gary Player, with the palazzo serving as club house. QC Terme took the place over in 2023 and built its spa inside, split between an old-farm theme and pools drawn from local legends. A chestnut avenue still climbs to the door and frescoes still sit on some bedroom walls.
- 84 rooms
- Opened 1999
About QC Grand Hotel Villa Arzaga Garda Spa & Golf
- The Roveglio family, Milanese landowners living at Salo, rebuilt the palace as a country seat and held it for more than two centuries, until debts forced them to sell in 1813.
- The Gary Player nine climb through a cedar wood, and the walk up to its high first tee is steep enough that most players arrive out of breath.
- After the Forti family closed off the fourth side of the courtyard to make what is now the main facade, the palace was left empty until the 1960s.
History
Palazzo Arzaga is a Renaissance country palace above Calvagese della Riviera, in the morainic hills of the Brescian hinterland behind Lake Garda. Under Venetian rule the estate belonged to Francesco Roveglio, a Milanese living at Salo; after his death his sons rebuilt the structure completely as a country seat, and the family held it for more than two centuries until debts forced a sale in 1813. The Forti family then closed the fourth side of the quadrangle, creating the facade that now faces the drive, and the Salvi brothers of Brescia owned it in the nineteenth century. The house was left empty until 1963, when Baron Lando Lanni della Quara, who also owned the castle at Drugolo, bought it. Over its life the complex had been a farm estate, a monastery, a silk manufactory and a family seat; the baron turned it into a hotel.
The conversion was done between 1995 and 1998 by Studio Berlucchi, working with the Soprintendenza of Brescia, Mantova and Cremona, at a cost of around 8.3 million euros. The old conventual building was conserved, the former brolo was excavated for the club house, and a swimming pool was laid along the natural fall of the land. Arzaga Golf Club followed in 1998, with an eighteen-hole course by Jack Nicklaus II and nine more by Gary Player across roughly 150 hectares; the palazzo became the club house. The hotel opened with 84 rooms and suites furnished in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Lombard-Veneto style, some keeping their original fireplaces, wooden ceilings, beams and frescoes.
Blu Hotels ran the property before QC Terme took over the management in 2021 and reopened the hotel and spa in early 2023, first as QC Termegarda and now as QC Grand Hotel Villa Arzaga Garda. The spa is divided into two halves, La Tenuta, drawn from the practices of an old farm, and La Riva, whose pools take their cue from local legends, with more than thirty wellness rituals between them. The golf remained with the property's owner.
The setting
Calvagese della Riviera sits in the morainic hills of the Valtenesi, about ten minutes' drive from the Brescian shore of Lake Garda and set among oak and horse-chestnut woodland with the Dolomites on the horizon. The estate runs to about 150 hectares, most of it now golf course and park. Brescia is roughly twenty kilometres away, Verona around fifty, and the Lake Garda Wine and Flavour Route, created in 2001 to open up the Brescian shore's wines, passes through the same hills.
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