History and people

Right from the Bronze Age, the lake has been home to people who found food there and travelled across its waters, as is testified to by the frequent traces of lake dwellings found here.

In the Middle Ages, the Romans began colonising the countryside around Verona, giving rise to more stable settlements, the CASTLES: indeed, the layout of the towns along the lakeshore (Peschiera, Lazise, Bardolino, Torri del Benaco, Garda, Malcesine) derives from the castle-neighbourhood combination and the defensive features it implied, which remained in place until the Venetians defeated the Viscounts of Milan and the Carraresi family of Padua, as a result of which the population grew in the surrounding countryside and agriculture received a boost, particularly from the farming of silk worms, which fed on the mulberry leaves.

Olives and vines were grown on the hills, while at the high end of the lake – especially on the Brescia side – citrus trees were grown; in the inland areas sheep were raised, and the woodlands yielded timber. Fishing was the main business of the lakeside villages.

In 1400, the EASTERN shore of the lake – the present-day Verona side of the Garda area – was less independent and industrialised than the western shore, but the villages in the Verona District organised themselves into the GARDESANA DELL’ACQUA, a federation of a fiscal nature whose main aim was to combat smuggling and other types of crime.

From 1500, plague, cholera and famine ravaged the Garda areas, especially those in the east, because the structure of the land was such as to allow foreign soldiers to pass through it easily. After 1815, battles in the “wars of independence” were fought here, until the areas became part of Italy: the Lombardy shore in 1859, the Veneto side in 1866 and the Trentino side in 1918.

Numerous findings from all these periods in history can be found both in the local museums and throughout the area itself.