Lazise & Peschiera del Garda, Lake Garda, Veneto, Italy

Lazise

Lazise is a comune (municipality) and town in the Province of Verona in the Italian region Veneto, located about 120 kilometres (75 miles) west of Venice and about 20 kilometres (12 miles) northwest of Verona. It is situated on the eastern shore of Lake Garda. This geographical location empowers a position of great landscape value, but it also features elements of great architectural value and of great historical importance.

The name Lazise comes from the Latin word lacus that means ‘lakeside village’, as some documents of Early Middle Ages seem to confirm, referring to the settlement as Laceses. Another hypothesis, later ruled out, put the name of the town as originating from Antonio Bevilacqua di Loncis. Loncis, from his castle in Bavaria, became governor of Lake Garda and the forefather of a major family that then changed its name to Bevilacqua-Lazise. The last hypothesis was lately ruled out and it comes from Lazica Kingdom.

It’s name derives from the Latin "lacus" which means lacustrine village. Lazise in fact was originally a group of stilt houses beyond that Roman village and market. Between 888 and 961, during the reign of Berengar II of Italy and his son, the town was subject only to the monarch, that is, it was a "free villa" not subject to some feudatary. In 961, Italy was invaded by German troops, who descended the valley of the Adige to camp on the shores of Garda.

In 983, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I granted Lazise the right to fortify itself and establish trading rights. It is considered as the first and oldest comune in Italy, and perhaps all of Europe. The medieval Church of Saint Nicolò has frescoes dating from the 12th century, by the school of Giotto. The customs house from the 16th century was constructed to control trade on the lake. During the 13th and 14th centuries, Lazise was occupied by the Scaligeri of Verona who built the castle and encircled the town with walls.

In 1405, it came under Venetian Republic rule until Napoleon conquered northern Italy in 1796.

After the Congress of Vienna (1815) when it entered a period of Austrian rule, until in 1866, it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy.

The 14th-century La Pergolana villa, a kilometre north of Lazise, hosts a honey festival during the first weekend of October.
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Peschiera del Garda

Peschiera del Garda is a town and comune in the province of Verona, in Veneto, Italy. When Lombardy-Venetia was under Austrian rule, Peschiera was the northwest anchor of the four fortified towns constituting the Quadrilatero. The fortress is on an island in the river Mincio at its outlet from Lake Garda.

Roman Ardelica was a town of Gallia Transpadana that occupied the site of the modern Peschiera del Garda, at the southeast angle of the Lacus Benacus (Lago di Garda), just where the Mincius (modern Mincio) issued from the lake. The name is found under the corrupted form Ariolica in the Tabula Peutingeriana, which correctly places it between Brixia and Verona; the true form is preserved by inscriptions, of which one says that it was a trading place, with a corporation of ship-owners, collegium naviculariorum Ardelicensium. (Orell. Inscr. 4108.) The town is mentioned as Arilica in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia.

The fortress at Peschiera played a prominent part in most military campaigns conducted in northern Italy after 1400, especially during the Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. At the Battle of Peschiera fought on 6 August 1796, the day after the major French victory at the Battle of Castiglione, a French force commanded by general Masséna drove out the Austrians. After the Siege of Peschiera, during the First Italian War of Independence, it was taken by the Piedmontese from the Austrians, following a gallant defence by general Rath lasting six weeks, on 30 May, 1848.

During World War I, the Peschiera conference between the British and French premiers and the Italian king took place on 8 November 1917.

Peschiera del Garda was also known for its military jail, which closed in 2002.

The commune is part of the Associazione Città del vino ("Association of Wine Cities").