The Lake Garda Riviera Geography

Lake Garda is the largest lake in Italy, roughly 370 square kilometres, shared between three regions. The Veneto holds the whole eastern shore, in the province of Verona.

The lake has two entirely different halves. The south is broad and shallow, ringed by low morainic hills -- debris left by the glacier that gouged the basin -- which are what the Bardolino vineyards grow on.

The north is a narrow fjord-like trench, deep and steep-sided, with Monte Baldo rising to 2,218 metres directly from the eastern shore. The road there is cut into the rock and runs through tunnels.

The lake drains south through the Mincio at Peschiera, and it is a major water source for irrigation across the Po plain -- which is why falling levels in drought years matter well beyond the shore.

Monte Baldo is the shore's other geography. Because its higher ground escaped the full weight of the glaciations, it kept species that were destroyed elsewhere in the Alps, and it holds an exceptional concentration of endemic plants.