Lake Garda: The Largest Lake Resort in Europe

Lake Garda is one of Italy's greatest natural marvels. With a surface area of nearly 143 square miles, it is the largest lake in Europe. Lake Garda's northern Italian setting is bounded by high mountains, rendering it immune to chilly winds from the Alps and creating in a micro-climate that remains mild all year around. That mild weather, combined with its beautiful natural surroundings, have made Lake Garda a popular resort destination for centuries.

We know that the Romans prized the Lake Garda era, because the Roman poet Cattalus kept a villa there and wrote about it. More recently (and infamously), the lake attracted Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to set up the brief-lived capital of his rump Italian Social Republic, after his overthrow.

Visitors to the area will find plenty of beautiful sights to occupy their senses. The mountainous slopes surrounding the lake are rich with lemon and olive orchards, grape vines, wild mountain herbs and seasonal flowers. Both the rugged highland terrain and the lake's shores are home to a number of small, isolated villages. Settings like these are ideal for country hikes, scenic drives, road biking, horseback riding or just a simple picnic. The more adventurous can try their hands at scaling some of the Lake Garda area's cliff faces, or enjoy the increasingly popular sport of Canyoning.

Because of its vast size, Lake Garda enjoys the kind of clear waters that are rare for a body of freshwater, and are more common to tropical island seas. That makes it one of an extreme rarity for scuba divers, namely a top freshwater dive site in continental Europe. The presence of several dive shops and diving clubs around Lake Garda testify to the quality of the diving conditions there. There are even some ship wrecks on the bottom, although most of these are in the realm of technical diving.

The size of the lake also make it a good place for water sports, such as water skiing, wind-surfing, para-sailing, sailing and fishing.

Sources: gps4touring.com/POIs/northern-italy.htm; lakegardaholiday.com; gardalake.it