Riva shipyard

From the road, you would sooner suspect the whitewashed building complex to be a storage facility for caravans than the home of the world-famous boat builder Riva. Riva is the story of master craftsman Pietro Riva, who settled in the town of Sarnico as a boat repairman on Lake Iseo in 1842 to establish the shipyard that would be expanded by his descendants Ernesto, Serafino, and Carlo into the nautical mecca of the super-rich, and whose reputation is built on the threefold foundation of noble craftsmanship, superior performance, and quirky design. The Italian Riva, in the glory days of Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, was the favorite water transport of the greats of the earth, and it is the Rolls-Royce among yacht builders. The company no longer builds romantic wooden motorboats like the Aquarama, but with the current model line - and high, therefore snob-promoting prices - the style-sensitive big capital is still adequately served. Riva is the brand of the shiny, elegantly lined wooden pleasure yachts with the arched contour of a dolphin during a leap. It is the brand of princes and stars: King Hussein of Jordan, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg. It is the brand of an era, the 1950s and 60s, in which glamour had not yet been devalued.

GTO