Endogenous or Exogenous Recovery? Relaunching Tourism on Lake Garda in the Postwar Period

If the historiography on the reconstruction period in Italy can count on several contributions, the same cannot be stated for tourism. Despite the post-World War II period marking the beginning of a new phase for international tourism – with a leading role for Italy –, few studies try to reconstruct the main projects and decisions that were implemented at the national as well as at the local level to resume Italian tourism in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The objective of this study is to shed light on the above-mentioned topics by reconstructing and analyzing the case of the relaunch of tourism on Lake Garda in the early postwar period. In particular, we intend to propose an analysis of the role that institutions and entrepreneurs played in restoring normality after the halt of tourist flows. Working on a local context of undoubted national relevance, the intention is to verify the results of projects concretized in the reconstruction and, ultimately, to stimulate a debate on the effects of the ERP aids in the tourism sector.