As part of our recent Lake Garda trip, we ventured slightly further north to a terrific city I’d never heard much about: Trento.
I talked in my last post about how easy it is to add on a day here, there and everywhere when it comes to planning a trip to northern Italy. We were determined not to fall into too many of those traps on our Lake Garda trip, because we wanted to relax as much as explore. We didn’t so much as catch a whiff of Verona, despite it being right there, and on the lake itself we prioritised a handful of towns across two days during our week’s stay.
Being at the north end of the lake, though, meant that we were within a tantalising distance of the Dolomites. We had the option to do a packed day tour into the heart of the mountains, but instead we decided to just spend a few hours in the gateway to the Dolomites, Trento.
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The bonus of staying in Riva del Garda was getting a Trentino guest card free for the duration of our stay. This gave us access to various attractions, discounts on tours and activities, and most importantly, completely free public transport within the Trentino region.
That presented us with the opportunity to visit Trento completely free of charge. So obviously it would have been rude not to!
From Riva, it was a 30-40 minute bus ride to Rovereto, followed by a 15-20 minute train to Trento. This was a super easy journey on the way up, although coming back didn’t work out quite so well. More on that later; for now, I’m going to focus on why Trento was worth the visit!
We pulled into Trento’s train station which is just a short walk through a park to the town centre, and arrived to a huge sports festival that had just kicked off for the next few days.
There was LOADS going on – in the small park alone, there were volleyball games being played in a court, a temporary boxing ring had been set up, and kids were having a go on VR kayaks. Shortly after, we walked into the main town square, and Ash recognised a footballer on stage giving a talk. We checked out an F1 car that was casually parked up in a box, and then elsewhere found a full size LEGO version!
That’s 562,000 Lego bricks, apparently! Unreal.
We talked about how good it would be for these types of festivals to happen in the UK, and perhaps encourage kids to pick up sports they hadn’t considered. It was one really cool thing about this region in general; there were so many outdoor activities going on all around Riva as well.
Despite the fanfare, it all felt very local, and in fact what I loved about Trento is just how non-touristy it is. We stopped at a wine bar for lunch because people raved about the spaghetti carbonara there, and there was no English on the menu, and the waitress didn’t speak English either. I tried to order lemonade and ended up with a shandy! Whoops.
The main square, despite the stages and all the hustle and bustle, was extremely pretty with a huge church and a striking fountain. We enjoyed wandering the streets, stopping to listen to a man playing some classical tunes on a row of bottles.
It’s the type of place that’s just nice to walk around and discover slowly without doing anything in particular (except eating and drinking).
(And on that note, as an aside, everywhere provides snacks alongside drinks as an aperitivo – our hotel, restaurants, cafés, wine bars, literally everywhere. In the past, I’ve been charged for these so I’m always wary of them, but we never got charged at all. I think one place charged a coperto – cover charge – which I thought was fairly standard in northern Italy, but nowhere else even did that! It’s one of many things I loved about this area and Lake Garda.)
There was one thing we did want to do though: the main tourist attraction in Trento is the castle, Castello del Buonconsiglio, which is now a highly rated museum. I had another reason for wanting to go: it offers an incredible view over the town from the Venetian loggias at the top.
But, superficial as my reason was, I’m glad we went because the museum is fantastic. It was interesting learning the history of the region and its ties to the Austro-Hungarian empire – after all, the country of Italy as we know it is relatively modern, and it was little more than a century ago that this area, along with nearby Tyrol, became part of it.
It’s for that reason that Trento itself is so interesting – there is a lot of Germanic influence prevalent now. I imagine this only gets more prominent the further north you go towards the Austrian border.
The castle is home to some amazing frescoes too, and after the museum sections, you are guided through a few of the castle rooms before coming out into a garden area. It’s easy to spend at least a couple of hours there, although it’s worth noting that a lot of the museum is only in Italian – I had to use Google Lens to translate. Thank goodness for technology!
At the moment, they also have a temporary exhibition on about ancient Egypt, and I’ll tell you what, seeing a mummified cat wasn’t what I expected to see that day, but there you go! There was even a cabinet with mummified limbs!
We got a discount with our Trentino guest card too (7€ instead of 10€), which made it even more worth the visit.
Trento is also home to a really unique art gallery set inside two old road tunnels! We had decided just to visit the castle, as we didn’t want a long day out, so we only really got a taster of the city and missed out these tunnels – even though they are completely free.
With how long our wait was for the bus back to Riva from Rovereto, we may as well have checked them out, to be honest! Yup, for some reason the bus which generally ran once an hour, had a random 2.5 hour gap which we hit square in the middle. Better than missing that previous bus by minutes though, I guess. It was such awkward timing because we could have checked out some of Rovereto and popped into a café, but then we’d end up rushing. So we spent a very exciting hour at a bus stop, though we did at least waste some time searching for the bus stop, because from what we could tell on the map, the usual one was blocked off amongst a construction site and there were no signs for an alternative one.
And then the bus back… was interesting. It was basically a coach rather than a bus, and it was so full that I was standing most of the way back. Standing, on a coach! At one point, people were standing all the way down the steps, squished into the door. A German man next to Ash noted that this would never happen in Germany. I’ve been informed by my bus driver friend that it is very illegal on coaches in the UK, too.
Which made what happened next all the more surprising.
We pulled into a stop with probably at least thirty children. And they all got on. I have discovered the true meaning of “packed like sardines”. People were practically elevated in the air to make space, some shoved into any space in front of people’s seats that wasn’t already taken by legs. I have truly never seen anything like it apart from one very local bus we took in Thailand.
I was thankful to have a seat by then, but I somehow had to get past all of those people to get out the front door at our stop.
Anyway, at least it was all free! And on that note, here’s some info about how to use the Trentino guest card, because it was brilliant.
How to get the Trentino guest card
The Trentino guest card is completely free for anyone staying in the region for two nights or more.
However, any information about it is not forthcoming. I happened to look it up when I saw that the Bastione in Riva would be free with a guest card – and discovered that the card is included with your accommodation. I went down to our front desk to enquire, and they gave me a form to put my name and email address down, along with the number of guests. They would then apply for the card and we would receive it by email within the next hour (which we did). Nothing was mentioned on check in and I didn’t see any signs, and we were never made aware by the company we booked through either, so you really need to know about the card!
I thought this might be a one off, but someone commented on my Facebook post with the same experience, except that he only found out about it on their last day! Luckily we were only on day two.
The guest card offers free access to attractions like the Bastione and Torre Apponale in Riva, Torre di Piazza and the Sardagna cable car in Trento, Rovereto Castle, and around 60 museums across the region. For some reason, it also includes entry to the Verona Arena, despite Verona not being in Trentino!
It also gives you access to discounts for other attractions like Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, Reptiland in Riva, guided tours, and services like spas.
And finally, it gives you completely free public transport across the region, including buses and trains. All journeys must end in Trentino, i.e. you can’t use it to travel from Trento to Verona.
You can activate your guest card on the Mio Trentino app, which also allows you to share the card with people travelling with you. If you don’t want the app, you can also get a physical card from the tourist info centres.
Using the Trentino guest card on public transport
If you know anything about trains in Italy, it’s that they are hot on validating tickets for specific journeys, so I was curious how this would work with the Mio Trentino app.
Next to the validation machines on the platforms were signs with QR codes. We simply had to scan that to show what station we were travelling from, and validate it in the app. On returning, it still said it was validated, but you need to validate it for each journey, so we did the process again each time just to be safe.
As for buses, it’s super easy – scan the QR code next to the driver. There’s a good video here showing how to use it.
Needless to say, we could have spent at least a full day in Trento, especially with all the free stuff we could have done with the guest card, but we were content with what we did and the time we had. If we find ourselves passing through again, we would definitely stop. It’s not far from Bolzano, in the heart of the Dolomites, and it’s on the train line between there and Verona.
Either way, northern Italy has become one of my favourite regions to visit. There are so many smaller towns like this that are absolute gems, and on this trip particularly, I loved the slower way of life and discovering the less full-blown touristy parts. There’s just something about it that I keep wanting more of.
Read more about northern Italy here:
⭐ Milan & Lake Como: Two Days In Northern Italy
⭐ Five Beautiful Towns You Should Visit On Lake Garda
⭐ Highlights Of Venice – On & Off The Beaten Path
⭐ Photo Friday: Scenes From Lake Como
⭐ A Day Trip Guide: San Marino From Bologna
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