Nature
Lake Garda
Lake Garda, also called BENACO, is the largest Italian lake. With its mild climate and the perfect water temperature it looks almost like a sea set between the Alps and the Po Valley.
The lake is surrounded by palm trees, oleanders, olive trees and vines and its shores touch three regions – Lombardy, Trentino Alto Adige and Veneto. All around there are picturesque villages, beaches and harbors, large centers full of life, parks and nature reserves.
Lake Garda is ideal for a tailor-made vacation, whether for nature lovers, athletes, or history and culture buffs.
Just about every sport can be taken up, both on and near the Lake – think swimming and sailing, mountain-climbing and biking, hiking and horseback riding, rafting and hang-gliding.
And then there’s the “Olive Riviera,” the zone running from Malcesine to Peschiera, in the Province of Verona: it is approximately 50 km of well-outfitted beaches and sports hubs, for those preferring fun, summer activity. Here travelers can find the amusement park Gardaland and other amusement parks as well.
If relaxation is more what you need, plenty of hot springs spas abound between Sirmione and Lazise, along with other resorts and golf courses.
One of the first and most famous personages in history to remain spellbound by Lake Garda was Latin poet Catullus, whose family had a villa in Sirmione. Later, Dante, Goethe, Ugo Foscolo, Lord Byron and Stendhal all praised Garda Lake and its environs. Not to be left out are Giosuè Carducci, Gabriele D’Annunzio, of course, who spent the last 17 years of his life in the Vittoriale degli Italiani, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Franz Kafka, resident of Desenzano and Malcesine from 1909 to 1913.
Isola del Garda
Located on the Brescia side of Lake Garda, in front of San Felice del Benaco, Isola del Garda, also known as Isola Borghese, is the largest isle of the homonymous lake and belongs to the Cavazza family who, since 2002, has opened it to public; special guided tours of about two hours are available, including a visit in the huge park, in the Italian and English gardens, to some inner rooms of the suggestive Venetian neo-Gothic style villa, and an aperitif on the terrace from which you can enjoy of an enchanting panorama.
Sigurtà garden park
The Sigurtà Garden Park is a naturalistic park of about 60 hectares and is located in Valeggio sul Mincio.
It is the largest natural park in Italy, and in second place as the most beautiful in Europe. But the Sigurtà Park is not just a garden, just think that it dates back to 1400 and Napoleon III of France was among its guests.
The Sigurtà Garden Park is a green treasury with countless naturalistic and historical attractions: in the months of March and April you can admire a million tulips, which represent the most important flowering in Italy and the richest in Southern Europe; the Avenue of Roses, which from May to September welcomes 30,000 reblooming roses; an extraordinary labyrinth, eighteen ponds, where aquatic plants bloom between June and July, and immense green meadows.
You can visit it on foot or by bicycle: among statues, monuments and buildings there are really so many things to be visited.
Parco Natura Viva
Parco Natura Viva is today a modern Zoological Park, an important protection center for threatened species, which has been able to evolve over time and take an active role in the conservation of biodiversity.
Designed since 1965, a first sector of about 10 hectares was inaugurated on June 25th 1969, the current Fauna trail. In 1973, a sector dedicated to African mammal and bird species called Safari was added, to be visited on board your own vehicle. In 1978 the structure was further expanded with new sectors: the Aquaterrarium, the Tropical Greenhouse and the Dinosaurs area, where visitors, for the first time in Italy, could admire life-size models of the reptiles of the past. Since 1985 an important general redevelopment project has been launched which has involved and still involves various fundamental aspects: zoological, architectural and managerial.
Heller garden
Andrè Heller defines his Garden a “collection of world’s regions ”.
Over the years, helped by a climate that Heller calls “air of luck”, he has managed to transform it into a heavenly garden hosting plants from all over the world. Andrè Heller has opened the doors of his Garden: the recipe for luck not as a secret place reserved for a few, but an invitation to all those who want to enjoy it, and who are ready to handle the realm of sensitivity with care and attention.
This incredible variety marries harmoniously with the artificial structures created in the garden and is enriched by contemporary sculptures and surprising scenographic effects, a pleasant surprise for the visitor who can enjoy the opportunity to take an unusual journey into a world that combines nature and art, both of international quality, among the sculptures of artists such as Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Erwin Novak, Susanne Schmoegner, Rudolgh Hirt.
A garden where different environments mingle, but where the goal of naturalness and love for the landscape and nature becomes the unifying element.
Malcesine cable car
The Malcesine – Monte Baldo cable car has always been a point of reference and a must for tourists in the Garda area, both during the winter season, but also and above all in the summer.
Beside attracting tourists for the natural wonders and the fantstic panorama of Monte Baldo, this cableway is one of the most modern and advanced cableway systems in the world, with its rotating cabins able to let fully appreciate the unique panorama of Monte Baldo and Lake Garda.
A blue-colored dream from Malcesine up to the top of Monte Baldo. The blue of Lake Garda that merges with that of the sky in an extraordinary panorama offered to the view in all its breadth: from the snow-capped peaks of the Alps, to the clear profiles of the nearest mountains to the sweetness of the plain. Here the cable car “flies” in a few minutes up to almost 1800 meters above sea level. Its rotating cabins, unique in the world, let you experience new emotions every time.
A charm that also emanates from the cable car stations: “butterfly”-like architectures with precious technologies inside.
Molina waterfall park
The Waterfall Park is the ideal place for a naturalistic excursion walking in the green of the luxuriant vegetation, among vertical walls of nude rock, wide caves and bubbly springs and waterfalls.
The center of Molina derives its name from the presence, in the past, of numerous mills (in Italian, mulini) working thanks to the hydraulic force of the same springs from which the beautiful waterfalls of the Park are created.
The Molina Waterfalls Park covers an area of about 80,000 square meters.
A synthesis of the low mountain landscape can be found in the Park, where several paths and itineraries offer the visitor the calm solemnity of a bubbling waterfall here, a colorful, full of flowers meadow between a wood and a precipice there, or the whirls of a tumultuous torrent.
