Sirmione and its Scaliger Castle

About this place

Sirmione is a town on a long, narrow peninsula that splits the southern end of Lake Garda, Italy's largest lake, in the province of Brescia, Lombardy, about 30 km west of Verona and 111 km east of Milan in a straight line. The first traces of people here date from the 6th and 5th millennia BC. From the 1st century BC the area became a resort for wealthy families from Verona, and the Roman poet Catullus praised its beauty and wrote of a villa he had here. In late Roman times it became a fortress. The town is guarded by the Scaliger Castle, entered only by its drawbridge. The castle, with crenellated walls and tall towers of grey stone, rises straight out of the water at the entrance to the old town, ringed by moats, with an inner basin that was once a fortified harbour. From the top of its tower the view sweeps over the town's red roofs and the blue lake. Visitors cross the drawbridge into the car-free old town, climb the castle walls and tower, and walk to the tip of the peninsula, where the remains of a large Roman villa known as the «Grottoes of Catullus» lie among olive trees. The town is also known for its thermal springs.