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The plain between Gioito and the village of Torre, bordered to the southeast by Via Torre, following a good length of Corso del Mincio and bordering what is now the Moschini estate wall to the north-west, was once the great and celebrated barco (park) of Castello di Gioito. From a cultural point of view, there is nothing remaining, however, a large proportion of its surrounding wall is still standing, together with evident signs of the roads that once ran through it. A hill faces the whole of the north-west wall, where there was once a fountain, built by Bernardino Facciotto, consisting of a great rectangular pavilion looking over a square courtyard surrounding a square pool. This structure can still be identified perfectly: the 18th century Villa d’Arco-Moschini replaced the pavilion and the pool still exists today. The overall layout of the current park, today devoted mostly to agriculture, conserves some evidence of formal geometrical and landscaping interventions. Two tree-lined avenues lead from either end of the square in front of the villa, heading southeast as far as the perimeter, creating a spectacular perspective around the building. Between these two avenues, close to the villa, there is an open space with an ancient round pool, followed by a long stretch of lawn ending in a formal garden with a central circular fountain, bordered flowerbeds and tidily arranged vases. All this can be seen, or rather glimpsed, through the great gateway that opens onto Via Torre. On each side of the villa, there are areas filled with trees organised according to the landscaping tastes of the garden, which, together with a lake of rugged shores, covered with lotuses and a neo-Gothic style pavilion, recall the beautiful garden designed by Leopoldo Pollack for Count d’Arco around the mid-1790s. The wall that divided the Gonzaga park in two – the south eastern part devoted to an animal reserve with both domestic and wild animals and the north western part devoted to vegetable gardens and orchards – has been lost. Today, access to the villa consists of a road leading off Piazza Matteotti, which connects to the two avenues alongside the formal garden described earlier.
(From P. Carpeggiani, Il barco del Castello di Goito, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 229-233)
