Arco - Villa Angherer - Sanaclero

Address/Place
Arco
Distance from Trento
- 35 km - 37m
Geographical area
Val di Ledro
Tags

Villa Angherer, more commonly known as ‘Sanaclero’, was built in the second half of the 19th century by Giovanni Angerer, a wealthy lord of Innsbruck. It was he who bought the land in Vigne, in ‘Olive’, and built the magnificent villa with its Romantic shapes and decorations and impressive staircase.
Particularly beautiful is the vast garden, approximately 30,000mq in size, which is home to rare and exotic plants like camphor trees, Himalayan cedars, cork oaks, eucalyptus trees, camellias, and a large group of rushes. A coconut tree from Chile used to adorn the staircase leading to the entrance of the villa, but it died during the harsh winter of 1985.
After the First World War, the villa was passed down to Angerer’s daughter, who was granted Italian citizenship, thus preventing the villa from being seized by the Italian State. Then, in the mid-1930s, the property was purchased by the ‘Fides’ institute, which turned it into a sanatorium for the clergy.
The villa was extended to the west with a long three-storey building and a church, while the farmhouse was given ad additional story and used for accommodation for the nuns. The new building, with its some 100 beds, was opened in 1936; some years later, further extensions were added, along with a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to which the sanatorium was dedicated, in the entrance courtyard.