“olive-silvery Sirmio”

Tennyson was describing Sirmione. The town sits at the end of a long peninsula projecting into the southern half of Lake Garda. If the northern lake is spectacularly alpine, the southern lake is low-lying and mildly Mediterranean, so therefore - olive groves. The narrow peninsula was the perfect place to put a castle, port, hotel or luxury villa, so Sirmione has all of these.

We arrived by boat on a morning when winds and weather had turned Lake Garda heaving and steel grey. We disembarked and the sun came out. By this afternoon the lake was glassy and blue-green.

Sirmione is prettily medieval, complete with castle. It was also packed with Germans. One nickname for Lake Garda is ‘German Lake’, for very good reason. More than once we have been addressed in German rather than English and signs are in 3 languages.

Lyn is pointing at the love padlocks on the railing.

We walked through the warren of gelaterias and souvenir shops. It was fun watching cars trying to manoeuvre through medieval streets and gates. Lyn has been looking for a gold watch, and we found it and bought it.

Then we walked to the end of the peninsula to see the remains of a huge Roman villa. Tennyson’s poem about Sirmione was about his Roman predecessor, Catullus, who had a villa here. Sure enough, a villa sits in an olive grove on the prime spot on the point of the promontory. In Roman times the lake was the final link for river boat traffic bringing cargoes from Italia to the alps. Rich Romans knew a good location when they saw it. Romans also knew that the best place for Germans was north of the Rhine. They would have been disheartened by developments since.

There were frescoes and sundry other Roman finds in the on-site museum.

We toured the ruins more for the scenery than the archaeology. The lake, olive groves, wildflowers and red poppies added to the general effect.

We had tortellini and tortelloni for lunch, an absolute highlight, and then discovered our boat wasn’t due to take us home for another couple of hours. We sat in the shade for a while and then went souvenir shopping. We didn’t find anything to buy but we did stumble upon two beautiful old churches where Lyn lit candles. In Santa Maria Della Neve there were great old frescoes.

We returned by boat to Peschiera. Tomorrow, Rome.