Nestled in the mountain village of Gardone Val Trompia, a two-hour drive due west of Vicenza, the Pietro Beretta Arms Factory continues to produce weapons for every variety of person who may want or need one.
From the 600,000 Model 92's produced in the United States for the military to the $90,000 custom shotguns produced for well-heeled hunters, Beretta has been producing weapons for nearly 500 years and is currently the oldest active manufacturer of firearm components in the world.
Occasionally Beretta will open its doors for tour groups of at least 20 people, with appointments only available during the work week. Individual and small-group tours are usually not available.
The tour begins with a stop at the personal weapon museum of the Beretta family. The middle-sized room, once the store of the Beretta family, is lined in warm wood panels and glass-fronted cases. Weapons on display include not only Beretta-produced models, but also various makes of guns produced throughout history. Within the wooden cases is a late 1500's production flintlock pistol bearing the signature of Gio Ant Beretta; a set of matched flintlock pistols once owned by the Napoleon Bonaparte family; and the weapon carried by General Giuseppe Garibaldi during the conquest of Naples in 1867. Also on display are Olympic skeet and trap shotguns, arquebuses, Mausers and a fine collection of John Browning-designed weapons. Conspicuously absent from the otherwise thorough collection were the AK-47 and M-16 combat rifles. For the firearms enthusiast, spending hours ogling over the weapons in this small but impressive museum is something not hard to imagine.
An early part of the tour includes a brief stop at several automobiles which seemed strange for their inclusion until Paolo Santoni, Beretta factory tour guide and retired senior engineer and designer for the firm, explained that for a short time, immediately after World War II, Beretta tried its hands at producing cars. The experiment didn't last long, with only three cars having been built, and soon Beretta was back to making weapons and accessories.
Through a labyrinth of hallways, corridors and stairs, the tour continues until finally turning a corner at the top of a modern stairwell. Lying before visitors at the top of those modern, sterile stairs is what must be the cleanest and neatest and entirely modern fabrication floor you will ever see in a modern weapons factory. The importance of this enormous space comes into sharp focus when it is understood that this is but one factory which makes up Beretta Arms network. Workers can be seen going about their business in areas clearly labeled by names or models of weapon groups they were building. The entire factory was a mixture of both new processes and old as each weapon wound its way around the factory floor. One large section has nothing but small, medium and large Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines, another fabricating robots and participating in every step along the way, humans. Visitors will see shotguns in every stage of preparation, starting with finished ones being looked at by quality assurance teams before being shipped out. There are areas with freshly milled pistol uppers and lowers waiting in large racks for a human to verify the quality of the yet-to-be-finished product.
What surprises and heartens lovers of fine quality firearms is the care shown in each step along the way as a highly trained human verifies each step of the processes and either corrects or rejects the item in question immediately.
The hour to 1 1/2-hour long tour certainly does not touch upon each weapon nor each process but whets the appetite enough to make the trip worthwhile.
Anyone interested in visiting the Beretta Factory should stop by the Vicenza Outdoor Recreation office on Caserme Ederle. Paul Brownlee, ODR director, frequently sets up tours for those interested in visiting the factory and will help individual groups wishing to do so on their own.
Check the ODR website to see if a trip is already planned by looking at: https://italy.armymwr.com/europe/italy/programs/outdoor-recreation .
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