Affi

The first documents that name Affi are of the ninth century, and they speak of a stone tower raised as a defence against the raids of the Hungarians. The name comes from the Lombard Affa, perhaps marking the setting up of an arimannia. Between the eleventh and the twelfth century the area became a fief of the abbey of San Zeno of Verona and took the name Castelnuovo dell'Abate, from a castle just built near Incaffi. Then, in 1260, the comune gave itself a rural statute: ninety-two articles regulating the life of the time, and the document has come down to us whole. The old core of the village is made of seregni, the pebbles that the Adige glacier rounded as it came down.

Affi lies at the foot of monte Moscal, which with its 427 metres commands the southern part of Lake Garda: it has always been the key of access to the middle of the lake, and for that reason an underground citadel was dug inside the mountain. It is the West Star site, the bunker of the NATO command of Allied Land Forces Southern Europe, which has its seat in Verona: the decision came after the war, in the middle of the cold war. The same position makes the village today an exit on the Brenner motorway, and from there the tourists of northern Europe come down to Garda. At Incaffi, on the other hand, stands the villa of Girolamo Fracastoro, physician, philosopher and man of letters, who received there Pietro Bembo and perhaps the emperor Charles V, and who died at Incaffi.